MIT News - Humanitieshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/topic/mithumanities-rss.xml
MIT News is dedicated to communicating to the media and the public the news and achievements of the students, faculty, staff and the greater MIT community.enTue, 31 Mar 2015 09:40:01 -0400Collaboration 101http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/sutd-collaboration-macvicar-day-0331
MacVicar Day examines MIT’s unique partnership with Singapore University of Technology and Design.Tue, 31 Mar 2015 09:40:01 -0400Elizabeth Durant | Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Educationhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/sutd-collaboration-macvicar-day-0331<p>On January 25, 2010, before signing a formal collaboration agreement between MIT and the <a href="http://www.sutd.edu.sg/" target="_blank">Singapore University of Technology and Design</a> (SUTD), then-MIT President Susan Hockfield said, “Our role will be extensive and direct. MIT faculty will be involved at every stage, from developing new curricula to helping with early deployment, assisting with mentoring, career development programs, and conducting major joint research projects. We also look forward to numerous opportunities for student exchanges and collaborations.”</p>
<p>Five years later, that vision has come to fruition. SUTD is up and running, with over 1,000 students and 101 course offerings, 94 of which were contributed by MIT. More than 100 Institute faculty — or roughly 10 percent overall — have participated in developing SUTD’s education and research programs. Yet, as panelists attested at the MacVicar Day symposium on March 13, it certainly hasn’t been a one-way street; MIT-SUTD has also greatly enriched education and research at MIT.</p>
<p>The symposium, “Undergraduate Education Goes Global: Learning from the MIT-SUTD Collaboration,” was part of MacVicar Day, an annual celebration of the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/macvicar/" target="_blank">MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program</a>. Dean for Undergraduate Education Dennis M. Freeman opened the program by recognizing the <a href="http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/four-professors-named-2015-macvicar-fellows-0313" target="_self">four 2015 Fellows</a>, selected for excellence in undergraduate teaching.</p>
<p>Seven speakers shared their perspectives on the collaboration: John Brisson, director of the <a href="http://sutd.mit.edu/">MIT-SUTD Collaboration Office</a> and professor of mechanical engineering; John Fernandez, professor of architecture; Diana Henderson, professor of literature; Chris Kaiser, professor of biology; Samson Lim, assistant professor of humanities, arts, and social science at SUTD; Lawrence Sass, associate professor of architecture; and MIT senior and mechanical engineering major Karen Hao.</p>
<p>Brisson began with a broad-brushstrokes picture of the collaboration. “Basically, we’re trying to develop a new, world-class university that is based on technology and design,” he said, adding that the Singaporeans want to replicate what they call the “MIT DNA. … What it boils down to is our sense of innovation, passion, … [and] entrepreneurship. … They want that there.”</p>
<p>Building a university from the ground up has presented a unique opportunity to create a new paradigm in technology education. At SUTD, which was incorporated in 2009 and is Singapore’s fourth publicly funded university, students are grouped into learning communities of about 50. For the first year — called the “freshmore” year, because one full calendar year is the equivalent of freshman year and half of sophomore year — each cohort takes the same classes and occupies its own customizable, state-of-the art classroom.</p>
<p>The curriculum is highly interdisciplinary, hands-on, and project-based; Brisson estimated that students complete 20 projects before graduation. Design, as a discipline, provides the core framework upon which the educational and research program is built. For example, instead of majors, SUTD has four interdisciplinary “pillars”: Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD); Engineering Product Development (EPD); Engineering Systems and Design (ESD); and Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD).</p>
<p><strong>"Wildly satisfying" collaboration</strong></p>
<p>Several speakers noted that one of the most rewarding aspects of their involvement in SUTD is the opportunity to meet and work with other MIT and SUTD faculty that they would not cross paths with otherwise.</p>
<p>Sass, who spent six months in Singapore and developed several courses for the ASD curriculum, said, “What I really got from SUTD is relationships — it’s an environment where you can get to know people and ‘date’ other faculty that you’d never have a chance to ‘date’ [here at MIT.] In Signapore, Sass connected with a SUTD professor with very similar research interests. Although they only overlapped for three days before the professor left for a mentoring program at MIT, that interaction led to a productive collaboration on visualizing and prototyping large objects.</p>
<p>Because SUTD courses are inherently interdisciplinary, these interactions are not limited to faculty within the same field. Fernandez teamed up with Sang-Gook Kim, a professor of mechanical engineering, and Edward Greitzer, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, to develop an Introduction to Design class for ASR. “These three professors from there different disciplines, maybe we have spent the most time together of any professors in those three disciplines here at MIT, in one room, working out a class,” he said. “And it was wildly satisfying.”</p>
<p><strong>Pedagogical innovation and iteration</strong></p>
<p>For many of the panelists, the MIT-SUTD collaboration has been a catalyst for change in MIT’s curriculum. “Many elements of [the Introduction to Design class] are coming back to MIT,” Fernandez said. “This is one of the main things we kept in mind from the very beginning, is what we do there, or what we’re doing in the service of [SUTD], how is that reflected back at MIT?”</p>
<p>Developing SUTD’s life sciences curriculum has led to innovations that could be imported back to Cambridge, according to Kaiser. SUTD has “given us kind of a test-bed to do some experiments in using digital educational tools.” One idea is to create a class with a wet lab component — such as culturing bacteria in a petri dish — and then use a simulator to generate enough realistic data for statistical analysis. “I believe this type of experimental setting, where you actually make a kind of cyborg between a real wet lab and a simulated laboratory environment, is going to be the future of how a lot of laboratories are run,” Kaiser noted.</p>
<p>Kaiser also described a new, hybrid curriculum being launched at SUTD that melds biology and chemistry. “You can’t really understand modern biology without chemical principles, and many of the most interesting examples of chemical principles come from the life sciences,” Kaiser explained. In the first two semesters, the course will cover topics where the two disciplines dovetail well; in the third semester, the time would be split between chemistry and biology, covering topics that don’t overlap, like genetics.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Henderson and Lim described ways in which the MIT-SUTD partnership has led to innovation in the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) curriculum. In an effort to improve SUTD students’ skills in communication, public speaking, and writing, Henderson offered a new Independent Activities Period (IAP) class this year: Global Shakespeares in Performance. In it, visiting SUTD students and MIT students did scene work from Shakespeare’s plays “in a way that I simply cannot cover in a 12-unit class of the normative type,” she explained.</p>
<p>“This collaboration really opens up opportunities for faculty, both here and at SUTD, for tinkering or experimenting with new courses, or new units within courses that already exist,” said Lim. He worked with other history faculty to create a pilot course at MIT, The World Since 1400. Instead of “shipping” the course over to Singapore, MIT and SUTD faculty discussed ways to reshape the class syllabus and materials to reflect the context and culture of Singapore.</p>
<p>Tweaking the course content is an ongoing process, Lim said. “Rather than just being a one-time iteration and it’s over,” they are evaluating what works at MIT, what works in Singapore, and identifying ways to adjust the course content and assignments. One idea under consideration is offering the course during the same semester here and in Singapore and having joint assignments between MIT and SUTD students.</p>
<p>“We’re teaching a world history course, right?” he said. “It’s one of the first times we’re really making an effort to make a global history course truly global.”</p>
<p><strong>Going global</strong></p>
<p>Creating “truly global” education and research programs is very much a part of the vision of the MIT-SUTD collaboration. Fernandez and his colleagues were keenly aware of this as they developed Introduction to Design. “The goal in a foundational class in design is not only to learn better how to design, but how to design for those intractable global social issues,” he explained.</p>
<p>Tackling those issues is at the heart of the International Design Center (IDC), a multi-million dollar research center with locations at SUTD and MIT. Research at the center revolves around designing devices, systems, and services organized into three areas, called Grand Challenges: design with the developing world, sustainable built environment, and information and computer technology-enabled devices for better living. Moreover, the design work that takes place at the IDC feeds into the curriculum at SUTD and MIT. For example, the IDC has sponsored several IAP classes, such as Construction Sets for Health, in which students design affordable devices patients can use to manage their health care.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Hao learned firsthand that just raising global awareness through student exchanges is a powerful first step in addressing challenging social issues. Last summer, she did an internship at a company in Singapore through the MISTI program. In the evenings, she helped run a leadership program for SUTD students to cultivate their skills in communication, presentation, and cultural awareness.</p>
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<p>&nbsp;“At MIT we’re taught and encouraged to become global leaders, and when I went to Singapore it was first time I realized how little I knew about the rest of world,” she said. “If we want to be global leaders and we want to do something relevant to people around the world, then we really need to be more aware and learn more about different cultures. And my SUTD friends taught me that.”</p>
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Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Education, teaching, academics, Singapore-MIT, Singapore, MacVicar fellows, Students, Faculty, Independent Activities Period, Global, STEM education, Humanities, Special events and guest speakers, UndergraduateMIT SHASS launches the Diversity Predoctoral Fellowshiphttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/mit-shass-launches-diversity-predoctoral-fellowship-0217
Three outstanding PhD students have been invited to study at MIT for the fellowship&#039;s inaugural year.Tue, 17 Feb 2015 17:56:01 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/mit-shass-launches-diversity-predoctoral-fellowship-0217<p>MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has welcomed three PhD students from other universities to campus this year through the SHASS Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship.<br />
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Funded by SHASS with support from the Office of the Provost, the fellowship is intended to expand the pipeline of diverse PhD candidates within MIT's SHASS disciplines. Candidates receive stipends and are paired with faculty advisors to help them complete their dissertations.<br />
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The three students chosen for this inaugural fellowship year are:<strong><strong> </strong></strong>Shermaine Jones,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>from the University of Virginia, who is working with Associate Professor Sandy Alexandre in the Literature Section; Rosa Martinez, from the University of California at Berkeley, who is conducting literature research with mentorship from Senior Lecturer Wyn Kelley and Associate Professor Margery Resnick; and<strong> </strong>Theresa Rojas, from Ohio State University, who is studying in Comparative Media Studies / Writing with support from professors Edward Schiappa and Junot Diaz.</p>
<p>All three women arrived for the academic year in the summer of 2014 and have been making the most of their time at MIT.<br />
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<strong>Gender, identity, and national belonging</strong><br />
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Shermaine Jones says she was attracted to MIT by the caliber of the Literature faculty. “I was excited by the opportunity to complete my dissertation at MIT because of the distinguished scholars in the Literature Section, the amazing resources available through the libraries and archives at MIT and throughout the Boston region more generally, and the generous support offered through the fellowship,” she says.<br />
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Jones is writing her dissertation, “‘Choking Down That Rage: Rage, Rape, Riot, and the Gender Politics of Black Resistance from the Protest Novel to Gangsta Rap,” on&nbsp;rage as an affective register through which black writers negotiate&nbsp;gender, identity, and national belonging. Already this fall, she had the chance to give a presentation about her research to MIT colleagues and said the experience provided her with thoughtful feedback and constructive criticism. “It has really been a pleasure to work at MIT,” Jones says.</p>
<p><strong>Melville and identity</strong></p>
<p>Rosa Martinez, whose dissertation explores the phenomenon of “passing” as a member of another race, particularly Spanish, says she was drawn to apply for the MIT fellowship to conduct research for a chapter she is writing on Herman Melville.&nbsp;<br />
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“Coming to MIT meant the opportunity to have at my fingertips the rich treasure trove of Melville’s papers and personal library,” she says. “Especially exciting for me has been the really neat pleasure of meeting MIT’s very own Melville scholar, Wyn Kelley, whose scholarship I had read through the years.”</p>
<p><strong>Contemporary Latino narratives</strong></p>
<p>Theresa Rojas, whose research centers on contemporary Latino narratives in literature, comics, and television, calls the experience of working at MIT “phenomenal.” She adds, “I can’t say enough about how well I’ve been treated and how much this opportunity has allowed me to push forward on the dissertation.”</p>
<p>Rojas’ dissertation, “Manifold Imaginaries: Intermedial Latino Narratives in the Twenty-first Century,” will explore how narratives work within and across media to construct dynamic stories that matter both aesthetically and politically. “I’m also interested in how neuro-scientific and cognitive behavioral research can shed light on what our brains do as consumers (readers, viewers, and listeners) of popular culture by and about Latinos,” she says.</p>
<p><strong>Fresh perspectives, cutting-edge research</strong></p>
<p>Reflecting on the inaugural Diversity Predoctoral Program year, Deborah Fitzgerald, Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS, said, “The School is really delighted to host these three young scholars. They have added tremendously to our units, bringing fresh perspectives and cutting-edge approaches to research questions. SHASS faculty and students are very fortunate to have them here, and we hope that immersion in the MIT community will give them a powerful start in their professional development."</p>
<p>Information about applications for the next cycle of the Diversity Predoctoral Program will be forthcoming later in the Spring 2015 term.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
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<em>Story prepared by SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer:&nbsp;Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Photographs courtesy of&nbsp;</em><em><em>Shermaine Jones,&nbsp;</em>Rosa Martinez, and T</em><em>heresa Rojas</em></h5>
SHASS, Awards, honors and fellowships, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Humanities, Literature, languages and writing, Students, Graduate, postdoctoral, DiversityWhen logic meets rhetorichttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/faculty-profile-edward-schiappa-0203
Edward Schiappa has studied reason and rhetoric from ancient Greece to “Will &amp; Grace.”Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/faculty-profile-edward-schiappa-0203<p>During the 2012 election season, Edward Schiappa closely watched the campaign in his longtime home of Minnesota, where voters were entertaining a measure called Amendment 1. A “yes” vote would have changed the state constitution to make marriage legal only between a man and a woman; a “no” vote would have been a move in favor of gay rights.</p>
<p>“Going into the 2012 election, I was not at all optimistic about the results,” says Schiappa, then a professor of communications at the University of Minnesota, who favored a “no” vote. After all, the “yes” campaign led in many polls late into the summer. But the momentum then shifted: The “no” side starting gaining traction, and on Election Day, Minnesota voters voted “no” by a 51-47 margin.</p>
<p>“I was watching the Minnesota campaign thinking, ‘They’re blowing it,’” Schiappa recalls of the amendment’s opponents. “But in fact they did exactly the right thing. They had a much stronger ground game, they enlisted a lot of religious leaders … and they reframed the debate [toward] family values, that this is promoting love and companionship and family. And history was made.”</p>
<p>Schiappa has a keen understanding of another factor behind the “no” vote on Amendment 1: mass media and popular culture. Nearly a decade earlier, in multiple papers, Schiappa and a pair of colleagues had been among the first scholars to present empirical evidence suggesting that television shows featuring gay characters, such as “Will &amp; Grace” were creating more positive attitudes about gays in the minds of the general public. Indeed, they found, this change “was most pronounced for those with the least amount of social contact with lesbians and gay men.”</p>
<p>A decade before that, in the 1990s, few people could have foreseen that Schiappa would be studying contemporary mass media. He established his academic reputation as a scholar of ancient Greek rhetoric, writing three books on the subject. Schiappa’s breadth of knowledge and appetite for new types of inquiry are two reasons he is now serving as head of MIT’s section in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, having joined the Institute in 2013 as the John E. Burchard Professor.</p>
<p>To Schiappa, this feels like a natural evolution.</p>
<p>“Rhetoric has been understood primarily as about persuasion, and that is a huge topic,” he explains. “Ancient rhetoric was when thinkers first explored the relationship between language and thought, and the role of ‘reasoned speech’ in collective decision-making. Those issues are still central to communication studies today. … So for me, there was never a disconnect between the study of classical and contemporary rhetorical theory.”</p>
<p><strong>Debating the future</strong></p>
<p>Growing up in Manhattan, Kan., Schiappa knew he would end up in a classroom. He just didn’t know it would be at the university level.</p>
<p>“Starting in high school I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and as I worked my way through college I planned to be a high-school teacher and debate coach,” Schiappa explains.</p>
<p>But as he was finishing his undergraduate degree in 1980, Schiappa says, “I was offered a position to coach the debate team at Kansas State University. It took only a few months for me to realize I really enjoyed teaching college students, and I’ve never looked back.” &nbsp;</p>
<p>Schiappa enrolled in a master’s program at Northwestern University, which has a leading debate program, “thinking I would get a quick master’s degree, then return to K-State.” That isn’t quite what happened: As a graduate student, he “discovered how much I enjoyed research and writing.” He also happened to be fascinated by the Greek Sophists, pioneers of classical rhetoric — partly spurred by a bestseller from the 1970s, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which discusses the Sophists.</p>
<p>After receiving his PhD from Northwestern in 1989, Schiappa taught at Kansas State and Purdue University before joining Minnesota in 1995. While much of his research at the time focused on Greek rhetoric, Schiappa’s interests also started shifting into the contemporary era. His methods have also evolved, to include quantitative audience measurement as a tool for understanding the effectiveness of mass-media communication.</p>
<p>“What I have tried to bring to the table is a mix of comparative methods that combines the best insights from both approaches,” Schiappa explains. “So we can analyze and critique individual shows like ‘Will &amp; Grace,’ but also step back and talk with audiences and do surveys that can help us understand the important cultural work such a show does.”</p>
<p><strong>The “parasocial contact hypothesis”</strong></p>
<p>Schiappa’s mass-media studies are also interdisciplinary in nature. While studying “Will &amp; Grace” and other shows, including “Six Feet Under” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Schiappa and his colleagues formulated what they call the “parasocial contact hypothesis,” which suggests that media content can influence social attitudes, much as direct human interaction does.</p>
<p>The idea links a pair of ideas from psychology — Schiappa started college as a psychology major — known as “parasocial contact” and “contact hypothesis.” “I think it’s important for communication scholars to be aware of work that’s being done in other disciplines,” Schiappa says.</p>
<p>Schiappa says he enjoys teaching, and encourages students to work on research with him, when possible; one of his books was co-authored with a former student. “I’ve been teaching long enough now that it’s enormously satisfying to hear from students I’ve had, in some cases decades ago, [and] to know you positively influenced students,” Schiappa says.</p>
<p>And while Schiappa was content at Minnesota, he is enthused about the challenges of his still-new position at the Institute.</p>
<p>“It was a fortuitous coming together of my background and MIT’s needs,” he says. “I’m happy to be here.”</p>
Edward SchiappaSHASS, Faculty, Profile, Humanities, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Social media, Technology and society, PoliticsDecoding the meaning of languagehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/profile-kai-von-fintel-0130
Linguist Kai von Fintel engages in research at the intersection of science and the humanities. Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/profile-kai-von-fintel-0130<div>
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<p>How is it possible that simple acoustic vibrations, hand gestures, and even ink patterns can give one person access to the thoughts of someone else? This is the central question of linguistics, and one that has fascinated Kai von Fintel throughout his career.</p>
<p>“We put these signals in the world, and others can read our mind to some extent,” says von Fintel, a&nbsp;professor of linguistics and associate dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). “I find that a baffling phenomenon — why not try to figure that out?”</p>
<p>To address this “insurmountably complex” question, von Fintel and others in the field take a scientific approach. “We’re trying to find patterns in data, making hypotheses, throwing more data at it and seeing how it holds up,” he says. “We look at facts to distinguish what we can understand versus what we can’t.”</p>
<p><strong>An intellectual home&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>As a teenager growing up in Germany, von Fintel studied math and chemistry in the hopes of becoming a biochemist or a mathematician. As a university student, however, he found mathematics too “dry” and switched his major to English — a language he had come to love through pop music. Yet&nbsp;it wasn’t until he attended a linguistics seminar on semantics that he finally found his intellectual home. “We read the manuscript of a new book that applied tools from Boolean algebra to the study of meaning in natural language,” von Fintel says. “I just fell in love with the topic.”</p>
<p>What makes the field so fascinating, he says, is that it exists at the intersection of science and the humanities. “Linguistics is basically the science of language. You use a scientific approach, but you get to apply it to something central to humanity,” he says.</p>
<p>After earning his bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Cologne and his PhD in linguistics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, von Fintel joined the MIT faculty in 1993. Throughout his career, he has investigated two specific areas within linguistics,&nbsp;semantics and pragmatics. “Semantics tries to figure out what part of meaning is from the signal itself — words, morphemes, etc.,” he says. “Pragmatics works on context and interactions between people and context.”</p>
<p>For example, suppose you were to tell a random stranger, “The cat is downstairs.” Chances are she would be puzzled — even though any English-speaking person could understand the semantic meaning of those words. The problem is that the pragmatics are unclear:&nbsp;What cat? Downstairs where? Why are you telling me this? By contrast, a couple living with a cat could get much more meaning from the same sentence: "Oh no, Fluffy is downstairs and likely ravaging the yarn basket!"</p>
<p>Over the years, von Fintel has published papers examining topics such&nbsp;as how semantics express duty and obligation, the use of the conditional, and what semantics are universal in human language. His latest work, a collaboration with professor of linguistics Sabine Iatridou, centers on the use of the imperative. "Across languages of the world, three sentence types are almost universal: declarative, interrogative, and imperative,” von Fintel says. “Of the three, imperatives are the least well understood. About 10 people in the world are working on this. We’re trying to find out the division of the semantic and the pragmatic.”</p>
<p>As an example, von Fintel notes that people typically use the imperative as a command, such as, “Shut the door.” Paradoxically, it’s also used in phrases such as, “Take one step and I’ll shoot you” — where what the semantics suggest (you should take a step) is not the true intended meaning. Iatridou and von Fintel’s paper, “A Modest Proposal for the Meaning of Imperatives," will appear later this year in an Oxford University Press volume, "Modality Across Syntactic Categories."</p>
<p><strong>An early advocate for open access</strong></p>
<p>In addition to conducting his own research, von Fintel is also a founding co-editor of&nbsp;<em>Semantics and Pragmatics</em>, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that is now one of the top four journals in the discipline. Last year, it officially became the second official publication of the Linguistics Society of America, which has published the journal&nbsp;<em>Language&nbsp;</em>since 1925.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Interestingly, when von Fintel launched the publication in 2008 (with David Beaver of the University of Texas at Austin), the idea of open access was still novel. “Before the Web, people communicated in informal networks, so it was hard to find out what was going on,” von Fintel says. “I felt an obligation to help people get access to what was going on.”</p>
<p>An early and passionate advocate for open access, von Fintel helped launch the MIT linguistics department’s first website in the early 1990s, and soon thereafter started his academic blog, "semantics etc.," to build connections among linguists and disseminate ideas throughout the field. He also served on the Institute’s Open Access Working Group, which proposed the open access policy adopted by MIT in 2009.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“One point of the scientific method is quick and open communication," von Fintel says. "You can build on results as soon as they happen. It accelerates the way science gets done. We’re changing the culture in our discipline in a big way.”</p>
<p><strong>Enhancing the MIT culture&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>As associate dean of SHASS since 2008, von Fintel also works to improve and enhance the culture of MIT, both for students and faculty. He chairs the&nbsp;SHASS education advisory committee and its faculty diversity committee. He is also an ex-officio member of the Committee on the Undergraduate Program’s subcommittees on the communication requirement&nbsp;and on the HASS requirement.</p>
<p>“It’s a great mission; it’s so important for MIT to have a strong School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences,” von Fintel says, noting that outsiders are often surprised to discover how central SHASS is to the mission of MIT as a whole.<strong>&nbsp;“</strong>We sometimes get visitors who want to learn why MIT is so successful. After a couple of days they realize that it’s the combination of top-level technical training plus the HASS requirement.”</p>
<p>Thanks to MIT’s outstanding reputation and its decades-long commitment to excellence in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, the school draws top talent in every area, von Fintel says. “Our faculty is just amazingly good,” he says. “If they wanted to, they could work anywhere in the world.”</p>
<p>The same could be said&nbsp;for von Fintel himself, but he’s happy right where he is. “Our school is a very interesting organization within an interesting organization," he says. "It’s endlessly challenging."&nbsp;<br />
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<h5><em>Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill</em><br />
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Kai von Fintel, professor of linguistics and associate dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Faculty, Profile, Linguistics, SHASS, Humanities, Language, Open accessDoes time pass?http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/book-brad-skow-does-time-pass-0128
Philosopher Brad Skow’s new book says it does — but not in the way you may think. Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:00:03 -0500Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/book-brad-skow-does-time-pass-0128<p>“If you walk into a cocktail party and say, ‘I don’t believe that time passes,’ everyone’s going to think you’re completely insane,” says Brad Skow, an associate professor of philosophy at MIT.</p>
<p>He would know: Skow himself doesn’t believe time passes, at least not in the way we often describe it, through metaphorical descriptions in which we say, as he notes, “that time flows like a river, or we move through time the way a ship sails on the sea.”</p>
<p>Skow doesn’t believe time is ever in motion like this. In the first place, he says, time should be regarded as a dimension of spacetime, as relativity theory holds — so it does not pass by us in some way, because spacetime doesn’t. Instead, time is part of the uniform larger fabric of the universe, not something moving around inside it.</p>
<p>Now in a new book, “Objective Becoming,” published by Oxford University Press, Skow details this view, which philosophers call the “block universe” theory of time.</p>
<p>In one sense, the block universe theory seems unthreatening to our intuitions: When Skow says time does not pass, he does not believe that nothing ever happens. Events occur, people age, and so on. “Things change,” he agrees.</p>
<p>However, Skow believes that events do not sail past us and vanish forever; they just exist in different parts of spacetime. (Some physics students who learn to draw diagrams of spacetime may find this view of time intuitive.) Still, Skow’s view of time does lead to him to offer some slightly more unusual-sounding conclusions.</p>
<p>For instance: We exist in a “temporally scattered” condition, as he writes in the new book.</p>
<p>“The block universe theory says you’re spread out in time, something like the way you’re spread out in space,” Skow says. “We’re not located at a single time.”</p>
<p><strong>Spotlighting the alternatives</strong></p>
<p>In “Objective Becoming,” Skow aims to convince readers that things could hardly be otherwise. To do so, he spends much of the book considering competing ideas about time — the ones that assume time does pass, or move by us in some way. “I was interested in seeing what kind of view of the universe you would have if you took these metaphors about the passage of time very, very seriously,” Skow says.</p>
<p>In the end, Skow finds these alternatives lacking, including one fairly popular view known as “presentism,” which holds that only events and objects in the present can be said to exist — and that Skow thinks defies the physics of spacetime.</p>
<p>Skow is more impressed by an alternative idea called the “moving spotlight” theory, which may allow that the past and future exist on a par with the present. However, the theory holds, only one moment at a time is absolutely present, and that moment keeps changing, as if a spotlight were moving over it. This is also consistent with relativity, Skow thinks — but it still treats the present as being too distinct, as if the present were cut from different cloth than the rest of the universal fabric.</p>
<p>“I think the theory is fantastic,” Skow writes of the moving spotlight idea. “That is, I think it is a fantasy. But I also have a tremendous amount of sympathy for it.” After all, the moving spotlight idea does address our sense that there must be something special about the present.</p>
<p>“The best argument for the moving spotlight theory focuses on the seemingly incredible nature of what the block universe theory is saying about our experience in time,” Skow adds.</p>
<p>Still, he says, that argument ultimately “rests on a big confusion about what the block universe theory is saying. Even the block universe theory agrees that … the only experiences I’m having are the ones I’m having now in this room.” The experiences you had a year ago or 10 years ago are still just as real, Skow asserts; they’re just “inaccessible” because you are now in a different part of spacetime.</p>
<p>That may take a chunk of, well, time to digest. But by treating the past, present, and future as materially identical, the theory is consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them. And at MIT, that doesn’t sound insane at all.</p>
Philosophy, SHASS, Humanities, Books and authorsAlumni gift to SHASS establishes Cynthia L. Reed Chair in French Studies and Languagehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/alumni-shass-gift-establishes-cynthia-reed-chair-french-studies-language-0121
Associate Professor Bruno Perreau will be first to occupy the new chair, which will have a profound impact on French studies at MIT.Wed, 21 Jan 2015 13:18:01 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/alumni-shass-gift-establishes-cynthia-reed-chair-french-studies-language-0121<p>Deborah K. Fitzgerald, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), has announced the establishment of the Cynthia L. Reed Chair in French Studies and Language. The new chair was made possible by a gift from Cynthia L. Reed and her husband, John S. Reed ’61, former chairman of the MIT Corporation, in continuation of their long-standing support of French at the Institute.</p>
<p>“This wonderful gift from Cynthia and John Reed will have a profound impact on the French program of MIT SHASS,” Fitzgerald said. “First, it will ensure that the school’s commitment to educating MIT students in French language and culture will continue into the future. And second, it will galvanize a new generation of French scholars to create innovative research projects that expand and perhaps even challenge existing traditions within French studies.”<br />
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<strong>Bruno Perreau to be inaugural Cynthia Reed Chair</strong><br />
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Associate Professor Bruno Perreau, the Class of 1956 Career Development Professor and a&nbsp;rising star&nbsp;in the field of French studies, gender, and national identity, will be the inaugural holder of the Cynthia Reed Chair, Fitzgerald said.<br />
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“Being awarded the new Cynthia Reed Chair in French Studies and Language is an extraordinary honor," Perreau said. "I could not dream of a better recognition of my work on family politics, queer theory, and French citizenship.&nbsp;I feel all the more proud because this new chair also pays tribute to the pioneering work of my predecessors: Isabelle de Courtivron, Edward Turk, and Gilberte Furstenberg.”<br />
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Perreau credited the three emeritus faculty members with building the rich research community of French scholars at MIT — one that continually moves the field in new directions. Indeed, it was the innovative teaching of MIT’s French faculty that inspired Cynthia Reed and her husband to endow the new chair, according to the donors.<br />
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<strong>Inspired by French language and culture</strong><br />
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“Studying French and spending a year abroad was a turning point in my life,” Mrs. Reed said. “While John was teaching at Sloan I took a French class with Gilberte Furstenberg.&nbsp;It was there I discovered that so many MIT students, from all academic disciplines, were studying foreign languages and cultures. We are hopeful that this support will enable others to have the same experience that I did.”&nbsp;<br />
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A member of the MIT faculty since 2010, Perreau said the Cynthia&nbsp;Reed Chair will enable him to expand his research into national identity, and minority politics in France. “I am interested in examining French culture as a resource for incubating ideas or forging new identities,” he said. “I deeply believe that the future of French studies lies in our ability to understand both French society and how it is imagined.”<br />
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The author of several books, including "The Politics of Adoption: Gender and the Making of French Citizenship" (MIT Press, 2014), Perreau holds a PhD in political science from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.&nbsp;He recently spearheaded the launch of the&nbsp;Global Borders Research Collaboration&nbsp;(with&nbsp;PRESAGE Sciences Po and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University), an initiative that promotes the study of identities, kinship, citizenship, and the sense of belonging across national borders. He also founded&nbsp;the&nbsp;MIT Global France Seminar, a free series of events that examine&nbsp;French and Francophone studies in a global context. &nbsp;</p>
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<h5><em>Story by SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Communications Assistant: Daniel Pritchard</em></h5>
Pont Alexandre III, ParisAdministration, Giving, France, Awards, honors and fellowships, Humanities, Global Studies and Languages, Global, FacultySHASS names 35 exceptional MIT students as Burchard Scholars for 2015http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/shass-names-35-exceptional-mit-students-2015-burchard-scholars-1222
Award honors sophomores and juniors who demonstrate academic excellence in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, as well as in science and engineering.Mon, 22 Dec 2014 13:46:01 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/shass-names-35-exceptional-mit-students-2015-burchard-scholars-1222<p>The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) is pleased to name 35 exceptional MIT undergraduates as Burchard Scholars for 2015. The award honors sophomores and juniors who demonstrate academic excellence in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, as well as in science and engineering.<br />
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Burchard Scholars can come from any school or department of the Institute, and this year’s honorees major and minor in a range of disciplines, including civil engineering, literature, chemistry, political science, electrical engineering, music, physics, mathematics, biology, media studies, and economics.<br />
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"What binds the group together," says&nbsp;Margery Resnick, professor of literature and director of the Burchard program, "is a powerful&nbsp;curiosity about ideas.&nbsp;The Burchard scholars are some of MIT’s liveliest undergraduates,” she says.&nbsp;“Selection for the program is extremely competitive, and the students chosen are unafraid to wrestle with new ideas.”</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.6;">Ideas and conversation at dinner seminars</strong><br />
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Named in honor of the first dean of MIT SHASS,&nbsp;John Ely Burchard, the Burchard Scholars Program brings undergraduates together with distinguished members of the SHASS faculty for a series of eight dinner seminars that reflect the range of MIT's research in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Past gatherings have featured&nbsp;talks on: how American social policies really work; the politics of aid to Haitian trauma survivors; what philosophy tells us about how to make big decisions; U.S. grand strategy in foreign policy; and the art of discovery. &nbsp;<br />
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“The Burchard dinners are, for faculty and students alike, an oasis in our busy lives,” Resnick notes. “I look forward to every dinner as the powerful ideas generated by our faculty are reflected upon, challenged, and enjoyed by this wonderful group.”</p>
<p><strong>Expanding horizons, in community </strong></p>
<p>The Burchard gatherings are famous not only for presenting leading edge research, but for building a warm, supportive community, and for giving students experience in the art of intellectual give-and-take — a skill students value for success in every field.&nbsp;<br />
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“'Engaging' and 'engaged' are defining characteristics of MIT's Burchard Scholars,” Resnick observes, noting that many past winners have gone on to receive other distinguished honors, including Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman scholarships and fellowships.&nbsp;<br />
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Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Kenan Sahin Dean of the School, will congratulate the new class of Burchard Scholars at a reception to be held in their honor in&nbsp;February 2015.</p>
<p>The 2015 Burchard Scholars are:</p>
<p>Evan "Charlie" Andrews-Jubelt '17, mechanical engineering and physics<br />
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Vincent Anioke '17, computer science and engineering with a minor in creative writing<br />
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Bhaskaran Balaji '16, mathematics and physics with a minor in music<br />
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Juan Bautista Hobin '17, mathematics with a minor in economics<br />
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Itamar Belson '16, electrical engineering and computer science and comparative media studies<br />
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Leyatt Betre '16, physics and political science<br />
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Emma Chaloux-Pinette '16, biology<br />
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Marina Crowe '16, political science with a minor in management science<br />
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Casey Crownhart '17, chemical engineering with a minor in literature<br />
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Skylar Goldman '16, chemical engineering with a minor in comparative media studies<br />
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Val Healy '16, comparative media studies with a minor in women's and gender studies<br />
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Shahrin Islam '16, chemical engineering<br />
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Linda Jiang '16, biology and mathematics with a minor in applied international studies<br />
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Joseff Kolman '17, physics and political science<br />
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Hane Lee '17, electrical science and engineering<br />
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Moriel Levy '17, chemical engineering<br />
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Julia Longmate '16, civil and environmental engineering<br />
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Githui Maina '16, chemical engineering with a minor in history<br />
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Veronica Montgomery '16, biological engineering with minors in Spanish and materials science and engineering<br />
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Jesus Moreno '16, materials science and engineering with minors in political science and economics<br />
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Kristen Murray '16, aeronautics and astronautics with a minor in political science<br />
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Chimdimma Okwara '16, materials science and engineering<br />
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Abigail Ostriker '16, mathematics with minors in energy studies and economics<br />
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Yihui Quek '16, mathematics with a minor in linguistics<br />
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Rafa Rahman '16, biological engineering with a minor in public policy<br />
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Vaishnavi Rao '17, brain and cognitive sciences<br />
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Daniel Richman '17, electrical engineering and computer science<br />
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Taylor Rose '16, management science and political science<br />
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Christopher Sanfilippo '17, physics and mathematics<br />
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Abra Shen '16, brain and cognitive sciences with minors in theater arts and chemistry<br />
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Benjamin Tidor '16, computer science and engineering<br />
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Dalia Walzer '17, biology<br />
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Shenghao Wang '16, mathematics with a minor in Asian and Asian diaspora studies<br />
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Ryan Webb '16, aerospace engineering<br />
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Lynn Yu '17, mechanical engineering and urban planning</p>
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<h5><em>Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Assistant: Daniel Pritchard</em></h5>
Awards, honors and fellowships, SHASS, Arts, Social sciences, Humanities, Faculty, StudentsBy any media necessaryhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/book-social-media-political-movements-1125
By studying immigrants, book provides a new view on social media and political movements. Tue, 25 Nov 2014 00:00:02 -0500Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/book-social-media-political-movements-1125<p>Nearly a decade ago, Sasha Costanza-Chock —&nbsp;now an assistant professor in MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing — volunteered at the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles, an organization that advocates for the rights of low-wage workers. Activists at the group wanted to inform local garment workers, many of whom are immigrants, about their rights.</p>
<p>To do so, they surveyed workers about which kinds of media or communications they used. Some had cellphones; a few had Internet access. But many workers, especially those instructed not to talk to co-workers on the job, listened to the radio or music at work.</p>
<p>So Costanza-Chock, along with colleagues and workers themselves, produced CDs mixing public service announcements about rights with music, oral histories, poems, and other materials. This way, many of the more than 60,000 garment workers in Los Angeles became better informed about their rights — and, for immigrants, about potential paths to citizenship.</p>
<p>The efforts of the Garment Worker Center were among the many cases in which advocacy groups tried a variety of tools — social media, radio, newspapers, street demonstrations, and more — to organize the nation’s immigrant-rights movement. While the political outcome of the debate remains unclear, the movement has produced unprecedented visibility for the issue, in part because of its diversity of media strategies, according to Costanza-Chock.</p>
<p>“It’s quite rare that a particular tool or platform is the centerpiece of an effective media strategy for a social-movement organization or network,” Costanza-Chock says. “Instead, movements work across many platforms to create strong narratives and symbols that circulate by any media necessary. And increasingly, they invite people to participate in media production as a way of building strong movement identity.”</p>
<p>Now Costanza-Chock has detailed this process in a new book, “Out of the Shadows, into the Streets! Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement,” published this month by the MIT Press — and appearing just as the immigration-rights issue is making new headlines, given President Barack Obama’s decision to take executive action on the matter last week.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In the book, Costanza-Chock enters into the debate of recent years about the role of new social-media platforms in abetting social and political change — a debate that precedes the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, but was amplified by them. Some observers have viewed social media as an essential spark for these movements; skeptics have said such platforms fail to create the lasting connections needed to make social movements successful. But Costanza-Chock thinks asking whether social media can build powerful movements is the “wrong question.” Rather, he offers, it is important to look at all of a movement’s organizing activities.</p>
<p>“If what we want to understand is the relationship between social movements and media technology, I think it’s a mistake to start from the technology, to start from the platform,” Costanza-Chock says. “It’s important to engage deeply with a particular social-movement network, if we want to look at all of the different ways people circulate media.”</p>
<p><strong>Making media, building identity</strong></p>
<p>In conducting his research, as Costanza-Chock makes clear in the book, he worked on several projects that aimed to develop media strategies for immigrant-rights groups, adopting the participatory approach familiar in anthropology. He emphasizes that actually making media — video clips, radio programming, social media messages, posters, newspaper columns — is important in how people start to identify with social movements.</p>
<p>“I felt there was something missing in terms of the way social-movement scholars understood the role of media, and media-making, in social-movement processes,” Costanza-Chock says. “The actual media-making process itself is very much part of forming social-movement identity.”</p>
<p>To be clear, Costanza-Chock does not downplay some of the changes brought about by online communications and communities; rather, in his view, he is placing those changes in a broader perspective.</p>
<p>“I will say that I think the Internet has made the diffusion of social-movement tactics more rapid, so people are now able to more quickly see experiments other movements came up with,” he adds.</p>
<p>And some of those tactics get adopted by developing social movements: The immigrant-rights movement, for instance, has used an approach developed by the gay-rights community, in which immigrants “out” themselves as undocumented residents in YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, street signs, and more. In so doing, they are attempting to humanize what can be an abstract debate.</p>
<p>“It’s a real human being saying, ‘It’s me, I’m a person, and if we’re going to have a real conversation, you need to look me in the eye so we can talk about it,’” Costanza-Chock observes.</p>
<p>Costanza-Chock refrains from making predictions about the future of immigration policy in the U.S. But he hopes he can catch the attention of scholars, commentators, activists, and other observers to reinforce the point that the relationship between social movements and media is multifaceted, and that the starting point for understanding that relationship involves grappling with the dynamics of those movements and their organizations.</p>
<p>“At a very basic level, any social movement is a narrative, a story, an idea,” he notes. “It’s a set of ideas about who we are as people, and what types of values we want to see made real in the world.”</p>
Cover of "Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets!" (MIT Press), by Sasha Costanza-Chock, an assistant professor of civic media in the Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT.SHASS, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Research, Books and authors, Humanities, Internet, Technology and society, Immigration, Social media3 Questions: Stefan Helmreich on wave science http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/3-questions-stefan-helmreich-wave-science-1121
MIT anthropologist of science explores how scientific “things” emerge.Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:00:02 -0500Kathryn O’Neill | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/3-questions-stefan-helmreich-wave-science-1121<p><em>In 2009, MIT anthropologist Stefan Helmreich explored the depths of recent scientific thinking about the living sea in his award-winning book “Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas.” Now, the Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology has turned his attention to the world of wave science — </em><em>the study of periodic, oscillating, and undulating phenomena — in fields including oceanography, cosmology, electrical engineering, biomedicine, sports, and social science. </em></p>
<p><em>Helmreich investigates waves not simply as facts of nature but also as objects of scientific, and therefore cultural, interpretation: </em><em>Indeed, the very definition of waves is in transition, as waves are explored by new scientific modes of measurement and description.&nbsp; </em></p>
<p><em>This fall, Helmreich delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester, an annual event established in 1963 to honor one of America’s first anthropologists. He recently elaborated on the ideas he described in his talk, which was titled, “Waves: An Anthropology of Scientific Things.”</em></p>
<p><strong>Q. </strong>How did you come, as an anthropologist, to study waves and wave science? Why are waves something that an&nbsp;anthropologist would care about?</p>
<p><strong>A. </strong>As an anthropologist of science … I am fascinated by how scientific abstractions operate to identify and create new entities in the world. So I am curious to learn, for example, what happens when scientists and lay people employ the abstraction of the “wave” to gather together quite disparate phenomena.</p>
<p>How has it become possible, for instance, for ocean wave scientists modeling “rogue waves” to find inspiration in the formulations of colleagues in electrical engineering who seek to understand anomalous pulses of light in optical fiber? How do cardiologists tracking waves of electrical potential in the heart draw inspiration from research in physics? How has the image of the wave migrated into social theory, making it possible to speak of waves of opinion, of revolution, of immigration, of innovation? The cultural work of analogy in the sciences —&nbsp;natural and social both — fascinates me. And waves are excellent vehicles for tracking that work.</p>
<p>Another reason waves might be of interest in anthropology is this: The discipline has lately become interested in thinking about that which is “beyond the human” — whether that is animal, plant, or microbial life or, indeed, the world of water, air, and earth. In a curious way, many anthropologists these days are trying to become less anthropocentric, thinking newly about all the other agents and objects with which we share the world.</p>
<p>So, thinking about waves — particularly watery waves and the waves of the vibratory world —&nbsp;is part of that. I will say, though, that one irony of the new “post-human” anthropology is that training our attention on the liveliness of such substances as seawater, soil, and smog often gets us right back to following the effects of human action, especially in an age that many geologists now want to call the “Anthropocene” — a term meant to call attention to how the geological record today bears indelible marks of human agency, from histories of coal extraction to legacies of atomic testing and more.</p>
<p><strong>Q. </strong>In your Morgan Lecture, you suggested that scientists and engineers modeling and predicting ocean wave behavior treat waves like “texts.” What do these texts have to tell us?</p>
<p><strong>A.</strong> My lecture centered on fieldwork I’ve done recently among oceanographers, meteorologists, and buoy designers, all people concerned with measuring, monitoring, and perhaps managing wave action in the sea. By attending wave conferences … I learned that ocean waves, for the scientists who model and predict them, are at once real things in the world as well as statistical abstractions that are made legible through a relay of at-sea buoys, feeds of buoy measurements into wave models, and simulated projections of aggregate wave behavior.<br />
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What scientists take a “wave” to be is an amalgam, a hybrid of instrumental captures of real-world events, mathematical descriptions of those events, and interpretations of those events for some purpose (such as weather forecasting). I find it useful, then, to think of waves as “texts" that these scientists read for meaning.</p>
<p>What do these special kinds of texts have to tell us? Well, the scientists with whom I spoke are curious to figure out whether Earth’s wavescape is changing in calibration with climate change. I find quite arresting the possibility that ocean waves — which might appear to be among the most “natural,” untouched-by-human sorts of things —&nbsp;might indeed be shaped by human action, might be characters in the Anthropocene.</p>
<p><strong>Q. </strong>How are models of wave action in such sciences as oceanography and, to take another example&nbsp;about which you've written, cardiology, matters of human interpretation and representation? What can we learn from recognizing this?</p>
<p><strong>A.</strong> While waves have a manifest materiality to them, the “wave” is also an abstraction, one that takes a particular form depending on how waves are conceived, observed, and modeled. In other words, waves often appear to scientists as “data,” and those data take shape in large part from the way that they are gathered — and that, in turn, depends on infrastructure. The world of waves cannot be understood scientifically except through networks of buoys, weather satellites, computer simulation systems, and more. That network is very patchy — much more elaborate, for example, in the Northern than in the Southern Hemisphere — which means that ocean-wave knowledge is unevenly distributed. There’s an international and hemispheric politics to who knows what about the oceans.</p>
<p>Here’s another example of how waves are known —&nbsp;or not — through networks of infrastructure: Many heart disease patients who have had cardiac defibrillators surgically implanted in order to track life-threatening arrhythmias are wirelessly monitored; electrocardiograph visualizations of their arrhythmias can be fed to websites where medical professionals can study these waveforms to see who might need what intervention when. That practice, again, depends on infrastructure, not always evenly distributed. Some people’s irregular cardiac waveforms are more likely to be caught than others, a matter that runs right into questions of disparities in health care access and the like.<br />
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The implication, then, is that “waves” — whether, in my examples here, biomedical or oceanographic — are not simply or only natural things in the world, but are also measured and captured as such through humanly built infrastructure — which makes them, additionally, cultural and political things, and therefore objects of interest to anthropology.</p>
SHASS, 3 Questions, Anthropology, Faculty, HumanitiesFitzgerald to step down as dean of SHASShttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/fitzgerald-steps-down-as-shass-dean-1120
After nine years, dean will return to her position as a professor of the history of technology.Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:55:00 -0500News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/fitzgerald-steps-down-as-shass-dean-1120<p>Deborah K. Fitzgerald announced today that she will step down as Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), effective July 1, 2015. Provost Martin Schmidt shared the news in an email to the MIT community.</p>
<p>Fitzgerald, who has served as dean of SHASS since 2007,&nbsp;and in the two preceding years as associate dean and acting dean, will return to her faculty position as a professor of the history of technology in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. </p>
<p>“Under Deborah’s inspired leadership, SHASS has maintained the highest standards of academic excellence throughout its departments, centers and programs and has become an increasingly important contributor to the Institute’s overall capacity for innovation in teaching and research,” Schmidt wrote in his letter. “In particular, she was devoted to strengthening the core undergraduate education requirements in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, and among her achievements was the recent restructuring of several academic units in the humanities.”</p>
<p>“Deborah Fitzgerald has been a tremendous leader for SHASS and an influential advocate for the humanities, arts, and social sciences well beyond our campus,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. “She understands that no matter how rigorously we educate our students in science and engineering, it is when we teach them about human culture and complexity that we truly equip them to change the world. For me personally, she has also been a wonderful colleague and counselor — wise, clear, candid, forward-looking, and deeply in tune with MIT."</p>
<p>As dean, Fitzgerald has led a school of 170 faculty members in 13 fields of study: anthropology; economics; political science; global studies and languages; history; linguistics; literature; comparative media studies/writing; music, philosophy; theater arts; science, technology, and society; and women’s and gender studies. SHASS, which teaches all MIT undergraduates, is also home to seven graduate programs, and to many labs and centers, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab; Center for International Studies; HyperStudio (digital humanities); Security Studies Program; Knight Science Journalism Fellows; Game Lab; Open Documentary Lab; and Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative.</p>
<p>“Serving as dean of this school, at this great Institute, has been a profound and humbling privilege,” Fitzgerald says. “It has been an enormous pleasure to collaborate with distinguished and dedicated colleagues from many disciplines, and with alumni from around the globe, to help advance MIT’s research and educational mission in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.”&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Boosting graduate and undergraduate education</strong></p>
<p>During her tenure, Fitzgerald has been committed to strengthening resources for SHASS’s distinguished graduate program. She also initiated restructuring of MIT’s academic requirements in the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS), improving its approach to HASS core education; re-energized undergraduate education in SHASS, including a program for developing innovative new classes; and spearheaded restructuring of several SHASS academic units to create a single, stronger unit centered on media studies and writing. </p>
<p>Fitzgerald has also strengthened the Institute’s offerings in international education. She was a member of the MIT Global Council that produced a 2009 report, “Mens et Manus et Mundi,” that explored goals for the future of global education and research at MIT.&nbsp;And she has supported the continued growth of the SHASS-based MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), the Institute’s international education program, which prepares students to collaborate and lead around the globe. MISTI connects MIT students — some 5,500 to date — to fully funded internship, research, and teaching opportunities in 18 countries. &nbsp;<br />
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<p>The MISTI experience begins with preparatory coursework in the languages and cultures of the destination countries. “Giving MIT students deep knowledge of other languages and cultures, and the capacity to be global citizens and wise leaders, is vital to a 21st century education — and critical to the Institute’s leadership position,” Fitzgerald has said.&nbsp;<br />
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<p><strong>Advancing the arts, empowering students</strong></p>
<p>Fitzgerald also helped spur advances in MIT’s arts programming, including the launch of the MIT Center for Arts, Science, and Technology (CAST), a joint initiative between SHASS, the MIT Office of the Arts, and the School of Architecture and Planning. Established in 2012 with a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAST was founded to further MIT’s leadership in integrating the arts into the curriculum and research of institutions of higher learning.&nbsp;Recognizing the powerful place that the performing arts have in the creativity, growth, and success of MIT students and alumni, Fitzgerald championed plans for a performing arts facility in music and theater at MIT.</p>
<p>To further share significant ideas, news, and research from SHASS, Fitzgerald established an in-house communications effort, creating a feature-rich website; a monthly digest, “<a href="http://shass.mit.edu/magazine">Said and Done</a>”; a permanent exhibition — “Great Ideas Change the World” — in Building 14N; active social media channels, including the Twitter account @SHASS4Students; the Listening Room, a curated, free, web-based collection of MIT’s finest student and faculty music; and the Tour de SHASS, an annual event at which MIT students meet and talk with SHASS faculty and explore the school’s academic offerings through a travel-themed expo.</p>
<p>An MIT faculty member since 1988, Fitzgerald is a leading historian of American agriculture and author of the award-winning “Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture” (Yale University Press, 2003). Fitzgerald is a past president and member of the Agricultural History Society, and a member of the Organization of American Historians and the Society for the History of Technology.</p>
<p>Speaking of her mission in returning to teaching MIT students, Fitzgerald said, “As educators, we know we cannot anticipate all the forms our students’ future challenges will take, but we can provide them with some fundamentals that will be guides for the ongoing process of exploration and discovery. We can help shape their resilience, and prepare them to analyze and problem-solve in both familiar and unfamiliar situations. Calling on both the STEM and HASS disciplines, we aim to empower our young students, thinkers, and citizens with superb skills, habits of mind, and experiences that help them serve the world well, with innovations, and lives, that are rich in meaning and wisdom.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>In his email to the MIT community, Schmidt said that he intends to appoint a faculty committee in the near future to advise on the selection of the next dean of SHASS. He also asked for insights and suggestions from the MIT community to help identify the best candidates for the next SHASS dean. All correspondence sent by email (<a href="mailto:shass-search@mit.edu">shass-search@mit.edu</a>) or letter (Room 3-208) will be treated as confidential.</p>
SHASS, Administration, Faculty, Arts, Humanities, Social sciences, History, Technology and societyMIT Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative launcheshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/mit-global-health-and-medical-humanities-initiative-launches-1119
Inaugural event, “Examining Ebola,” probes the current global public health emergency from multiple disciplinary perspectives.Wed, 19 Nov 2014 12:59:01 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/mit-global-health-and-medical-humanities-initiative-launches-1119<p>For its inaugural event, the recently formed MIT Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative presented “Examining Ebola,” a panel that probed the current global public health emergency from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The gathering, held at MIT on Oct. 28, also encapsulated the goals of the new initiative, which is based in the Anthropology section of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.<br />
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“We want to bring together scholars in different fields who don’t normally have a chance to talk to each other,” said Erica Caple James, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative. “With this initiative, we hope to encourage more interdisciplinary collaboration on health matters — teaching together, researching together, and mobilizing the creativity of all five MIT schools, as the Institute continues to develop its future role in improving human health.”</p>
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<p><strong>Political, economic, and cultural determinants of health</strong></p>
<p>In a series of planned panels and collaborative events, James says she aims to catalyze a “new kind of conversation” at MIT and beyond. “We want to look at illness and disease from a complex perspective, not simply as a matter of individual physiology,” she says. “This means also thinking through the political, economic, social, and cultural determinants of health.”</p>
<p>The six “Examining Ebola” panelists and moderator James provided a wide range of expertise and perspectives — from reports from the front lines of treatment in West Africa, to the latest laboratory advances in viral genetics and diagnostics, to analysis of the cultural and historical contexts for the current epidemic.</p>
<p><strong>The impact of history</strong></p>
<p>“The epidemic started at a crossroads where three countries meet in a forest region,” explained Adia Benton, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University. “The history of war and transatlantic slave trade raiding in that region shaped movements of peoples across borders, and also explains some of the hostility that citizens there have toward health workers arriving in the region.”</p>
<p>Benton said such mistrust can grow in the face of “a military medicine intervention,” where there are forceful barriers to movement and when triage and treatment is prioritized according to established social hierarchies.<br />
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Referring to allegations that biological agents were used during the 1970s on members of the independence movement in what was then Rhodesia, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, associate professor of Science, Technology and Society at MIT, noted that, given that history, it is not surprising that in his home country of Zimbabwe “people are hesitant and suspicious of well-meaning scientific initiatives.” Mavhunga called for “scientific innovation diplomacy” to “lay the proper groundwork” for medical advances that could help arrest the Ebola outbreak.</p>
<p><strong>Biomedical engineer works toward a field test for diagnosis</strong></p>
<p>One such medical innovation potentially headed to West Africa is a new paper diagnostic test for Ebola from the laboratory of Boston University biomedical engineer James J. Collins, who has recently accepted an appointment to the MIT faculty. Collins, a MacArthur Award winner and member of the three national academies, described an Ebola diagnostic technique that resembles a simple pregnancy test: a paper strip changes color in reaction to the presence of microscopic samples of Ebola pathogen. The test requires no refrigeration, and Collins hopes this test, along with an inexpensive device that can transmit results digitally, can move to field testing in the near future.</p>
<p><strong>Questions about the virus</strong></p>
<p>Accurate diagnostics and treatment also depend on gaining more intimate knowledge of the Ebola virus itself, observed Stephen Gire, a research scientist with the Sabeti Lab, affiliated with the Eli and Edyth Broad Institute. The virus replicates so fast that “you literally have billions of viral particles in your body, which take a while to clear out,” Gire said. Researchers have discovered RNA fragments in different bodily fluids months after Ebola is cleared from the system, he continued, and “it’s unknown whether this is actually infected virus.”<br />
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Gire’s lab is helping to show “how the virus is changing in real time, and where the mutations fall.” With 10,000 reported cases in West Africa — which, Gire says, might actually “be more likely in the 25,000 range” due to underreporting — many samples of this prolific Ebola virus are available for analysis, revealing to scientists the emergence of different strains in human populations.</p>
<p><strong>The role of government policy and public education </strong></p>
<p>Jeanne Guillemin, a senior advisor in the MIT SHASS Security Studies Program, and an authority on outbreaks of exotic disease said that resolving public health crises like the current Ebola outbreak requires the collaboration of researchers and experts from several realms. As critical as science is, she said, “Science alone rarely has all the answers.” For effective control of dangerous epidemics, she explained, the best medical science must be accompanied by astute government leadership and an informed public.<br />
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Guillemin also noted that limitations in political cooperation, legislation, and policy can damage our ability to respond well to health crises. For example, due to partisan politics the U.S. currently lacks a surgeon general to handle the Ebola crisis, including public education.&nbsp;<br />
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Although the past century saw dangerous anthrax and smallpox episodes, not enough lessons have been learned, Guillemin said. “We have been here before,” she said. "There is a litany of different outbreaks that more or less look like the one we’re having now.” Guillemin argues that large-scale public health emergencies can lead to policy changes that create long-term, meaningful structural solutions in the healthcare of developing nations, where outbreaks typically originate. “Deploying people to West Africa to help now is wonderful, but it’s a band aid,” she commented.</p>
<p><strong>Transportation, media, and fear, unintended consequences </strong></p>
<p>Yet given the scale of the current emergency, even such provisional aid is essential, said Jarrod Goentzel, the founder and director of the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab. Goentzel, who is engaged in helping move medical supplies to nations ravaged by Ebola, particularly Liberia, noted that “Africans are taking the lead on health care,” and he envisions that this crisis could eventually lead to strengthening health infrastructure in the affected African nations.&nbsp;<br />
<br />
Today, however, only three counties in Liberia have diagnostic laboratories, and many hospitals and clinics are closed for lack of adequate protective gear, trained staff, and sanitation workers. Moreover, several factors are thwarting the distribution of vital equipment. Not only are African ports, airports, and roads blocked by the rainy season, but actions in the U.S. are complicating the supply chain as well.<br />
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With media coverage fanning fear at home, said Goentzel, “a lot of politicians are taking action, and, as just one example, the state of Ohio recently decided to stockpile protective personal equipment.” Actions like this lead to misallocation of resources, he said, and essential equipment “is not getting into the parts of the world where we have the most cases.”</p>
<p><strong>Out of the silos</strong></p>
<p>In the panelists’ conversation, Erica Caple James found confirmation that scholars from disparate fields have much to offer each other and the public on health issues. As the Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative gears up, she intends to spark more productive interactions among scholars in the humanities, social sciences, science, and engineering fields.&nbsp; &nbsp;<br />
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“Conversations are happening all over MIT around different components of health and health care,” she says. “But they tend to take place in silos, with institutes and departments each focusing on their research specialties,” she said. “We would like to help generate more cross-school collaboration.”&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
<br />
As a medical anthropologist, James traces how illness unfolds in the specific contexts of family, social network, and community, and brings to light “the human experience of health.” She has focused on mental health, and in particular the struggles of Haitians in the face of a series of natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and government-sponsored violence.</p>
<p><strong>Medical humanities</strong></p>
<p>Her field of medical and psychiatric anthropology is part of the larger, emerging discipline of “medical humanities,” a vein of study offered in medical schools that attempts, James said, to “provide greater insight into questions of human suffering, illness, and diseases, by situating them in historical and cultural contexts.”<br />
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Ethics, literature, the history of medicine, and the arts may all be featured in medical humanities programs. One goal is to give clinicians training in how “to think about a patient beyond being a constellation of symptoms on a checklist.”<br />
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James has seen that as medical schools “prepare clinicians of the future to encounter many different kinds of patients,” they are increasingly eager to add “cultural competency” to the portfolio of requirements for their graduates. With this in mind, James envisions an interdisciplinary Health Minor for MIT undergraduates who are pursuing medical and public health careers. In concert with the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science, she aims to help graduates and postdocs in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program who are seeking a global health course of study and research opportunities.</p>
<p>The “Examining Ebola” event was co-sponsored by the MIT Global Health and Medical Health Initiative, MIT SHASS Anthropology, and Prehealth Advising in the MIT Global Education &amp; Career Development Office.&nbsp;</p>
<p>_____________________________________________________________________________<br />
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<em>Story prepared by MIT&nbsp;SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Writer: Leda Zimmerman</em><br />
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Erica JamesSHASS, Anthropology, Medicine, Humanities, Social sciences, Faculty, Health care, Technology and society, Ebola, Special events and guest speakersHistorian David Mindell named 2015 AAIA Associate Fellowhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/historian-david-mindell-named-2015-aaia-associate-fellow-1022
Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:37:01 -0400Kierstin Wesolowski | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/historian-david-mindell-named-2015-aaia-associate-fellow-1022<p>The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has selected MIT historian and engineer David A. Mindell as a 2015 AIAA Associate Fellow.&nbsp;<br />
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“It is great honor to be selected,” said Mindell, the Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing in the Program of Science, Technology and Society (STS), and a professor of aeronautics and astronautics. “As aerospace engineering grapples with the critical importance of human beings in robotic and unmanned systems, it is heartening to see that the profession values humanistic perspectives.”<br />
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The AIAA selects individuals who have accomplished important engineering or scientific research; created original works of outstanding merit; or have made notable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics.<br />
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“David’s research has spanned all three areas — arts, sciences, and technology — showing how they are inseparable in the history of flight and space exploration,” said Rosalind Williams, the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Head of STS. “His election as an AIAA fellow brings honor to STS, the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and to MIT, fittingly on the eve of the Institute’s centennial celebration of the nation’s most distinguished aerospace program.”<br />
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Mindell will receive the award on Jan. 5, 2015, at a ceremony held in conjunction with the AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition in Kissimmee, Florida.</p>
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David MindellFaculty, Awards, honors and fellowships, History of science, Humanities, Aeronautical and astronautical engineering, SHASS, School of Engineering, Technology and societySaid and Done for October 2014http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-october-2014-1021
Digest of the MIT humanities, arts, and social sciences features a Nobel Prize, a new professorship in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, three new SHASS websites, and more.Tue, 21 Oct 2014 13:41:01 -0400Emily Hiestand | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-october-2014-1021<p><em>Published monthly during the School terms, and once in the summer,&nbsp;</em>Said and Done<em>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;photo-rich digest from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with news and&nbsp;research to give a distilled overview of the school's endeavors. For the complete online edition, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1qss0XF" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Said and Done</a>. Highlights of the October&nbsp;2014 edition include:</em></p>
<p>ECONOMICS<br />
<strong>MIT SHASS alumnus Jean Tirole wins Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences</strong><br />
Jean Tirole PhD '81, a former MIT&nbsp;faculty member and a current annual visiting professor of economics at MIT, was awarded the 2014 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel&nbsp;for his&nbsp;<a href="http://on.cfr.org/1w4BxK6" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">analysis</a>&nbsp;of market power and how governments can better regulate industries from banking to telecommunications.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1sLnOFS" target="_blank">NobelPrize.org</a><span style="line-height:1.6">,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://bit.ly/1wtQQdr" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">MIT News</a><span style="line-height:1.6">,&nbsp;</span><a href="http://bloom.bg/1rra7Yu" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a><span style="line-height:1.6">, </span><a href="http://nyti.ms/1z5QMGw" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">The New York Times</a><span style="line-height:1.6">, </span><a href="http://bit.ly/1sDdm5G" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">The Boston Globe</a><span style="line-height:1.6">&nbsp;</span><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1qlyK9R" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Recording of Tirole upon receiving the Nobel Prize</a><br />
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LINGUISTICS<br />
<strong>Danny Fox named Anshen-Chomsky Professor of Language and Thought</strong><br />
“Danny Fox belongs to the rare breed of researchers who not only discover remarkable new facts about language, but also has the vision to see what these discoveries are teaching us about the mind as a whole, about the structure of language as a part of the human mind, and about the internal workings of language itself,” said David Pesetsky, head of the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.&nbsp;“He is simultaneously a theoretician and an experimentalist, a brilliant linguist, and a profound cognitive scientist.”<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1w2dxaA" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story</a><br />
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POLITICAL SCIENCE<br />
<strong>Bateson wins APSA's Almond Award for best disseration in comparative politics&nbsp;</strong><br />
Assistant Professor Regina Bateson’s dissertation, “Order and Violence in Postwar Guatemala,” won the APSA’s Gabriel A. Almond Award, given annually to the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1D8B0t4" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Bateson webpage</a><br />
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PHILOSOPHY<br />
<strong>Steve Yablo interviewed by Richard Marshall in&nbsp;</strong><em><strong>3:AM Magazine</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>3:AM:</strong>&nbsp;What made you become a philosopher?<br />
<strong>Stephen Yablo:</strong>&nbsp;Hmmmm. I guess it was Hebrew school. The teacher said that we must never judge God, since we don’t know a thing about him. I was in love at the time with Magilla Gorilla, a cartoon character. He struck me as a higher sort of being. This sounded nutty, I realized, and I kept it to myself. Then on hearing that nothing was known about God, I inferred that in particular it wasn’t known that he was not my loveable ape. I was told on raising this question in class that one thing was known after all; God was not Magilla. This confused me enough to start me down the road to philosophy.<br />
<a class="twt_avatar_tip" href="http://bit.ly/1sxyBFh" rel="nofollow" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story</a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>RESEARCH&nbsp;<br />
<strong>All current SHASS research stories by the&nbsp;MIT News team&nbsp;</strong><br />
Peter Dizikes writes about MIT faculty&nbsp;research on&nbsp;time and&nbsp;spacetime;&nbsp;the&nbsp;effects of&nbsp;means-tested social insurance programs;&nbsp;learning from African technology;&nbsp;the postiive impact of workplace diversity on profit;&nbsp;and&nbsp;barriers to a U.S.-Iran nuclear treaty.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1fBiTAn" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Stories about MIT&nbsp;SHASS research</a></p>
<p>NEW MIT SHASS WEBSITES</p>
<p><strong>Global Studies &amp; Languages &nbsp;</strong><a href="http://bit.ly/1w7ledT" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Lucida, Helvetica, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;" target="_blank">Website</a><br />
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<strong style="line-height:1.6">Literature at MIT &nbsp;&nbsp;</strong><a href="http://bit.ly/TuFYsV" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Lucida, Helvetica, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;" target="_blank">Website</a><br />
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<strong style="line-height:1.6">The Humanities Flim Office &nbsp;&nbsp;</strong><a href="http://bit.ly/1o8sxD4" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Lucida, Helvetica, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;" target="_blank">Website</a><br />
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MUSIC<br />
<strong>MIT launches a major new music series</strong><br />
The new concert series, MIT Sounding,&nbsp;will feature world premieres, reconstructed classics, and Grammy Award-winning musicians.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1sDHGNH" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story</a>&nbsp;</p>
<p>MUSIC<br />
<strong>Mark Harvey's Aardvark Jazz Orchestra releases new CD&nbsp;</strong><br />
Comprised of live performances recorded at MIT, Aardvark's 12th CD, "Impressions," is garnering enthusiastic reviews. Harvey is a lecturer in the MIT&nbsp;Music Program, and the esteemed director of the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1CpPOmN" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">About + forthcoming performances</a>&nbsp; | &nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1tYbfop" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Commentary at WBUR</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/SmTvQ4" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Mark Harvey webpage</a><br />
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FORTHCOMING<br />
<strong>October 30 </strong>|<strong>&nbsp;Ultimate Truths&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;MIT SHASS&nbsp;</strong><strong>Communications Forum event&nbsp;</strong><br />
Four brilliant thinkers&nbsp;will explore the differences and similarities in the kinds of knowledge available through inquiry in the sciences and humanities, and the ways that knowledge is obtained. Panelists are the&nbsp;historian, novelist, and columnist&nbsp;James Carroll; philosopher/novelist&nbsp;Rebecca Goldstein; author/physicist&nbsp;Alan Lightman; and biologist&nbsp;Robert Weinberg.&nbsp;Seth Mnookin, associate director of the forum, will moderate.&nbsp;7-9pm, Room 32-123 (Stata Center)<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1vPqDGj" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Information</a><br />
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<strong>MIT Music &amp; Theater Arts fall events calendar </strong><br />
Fall events include musical performances by Eviyan, the Jupiter Quartet,&nbsp;the Mysore Brothers, Seth Josel, the Ellipsis Trio,&nbsp;Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and others, and&nbsp;a theater production of&nbsp;<em>Philoctetes</em>&nbsp;by John Jesurun, the McArthur-winning contemporary author and director. &nbsp;<br />
<a class="twitter-timeline-link" dir="ltr" href="http://bit.ly/1p7R5FI" rel="nofollow" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/1p7R5FI">MTA events calendar</a><br />
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MIT SHASS IN THE MEDIA<br />
<strong>Challenging technical privilege&nbsp;</strong>|<strong> How race and gender matter &nbsp;</strong><br />
Silent technical privilege&nbsp;occurs when those who "look the part," or conform to society's stereotype of what a tech-savvy, number-crunching programmer or engineer looks like, receive the benefit of the doubt or implicit endorsement in technical settings. At this interactive symposium a panel discussed how technical privilege, stereotype threat and other forms of implicit bias contribute to&nbsp;underrepresentation of various groups&nbsp;in tech fields. &nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1p7EaFg" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story at <em>The Boston Globe</em></a>&nbsp;| &nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/ZfJlMj" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Video of event</a>&nbsp; |&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1B8jqSY" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Event website</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
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<strong>Evolving culture of science engagement&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;David Kaiser&nbsp;</strong><br />
Article in the&nbsp;<em>Huffington Post</em>&nbsp;about the "Evolving Culture of Science Engagement" project at MIT, which recently released a detailed report.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://huff.to/1yG13sE" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story at <em>The Huffington Post</em></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1thQnvT" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Interview + report</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;<a href="http://www.cultureofscienceengagement.net/" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Culture of Science Engagement website</a><br />
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<strong>Fact or Fiction: Video games are the future of education?</strong><br />
Few would argue that video games can do it all in terms of education, says Scot Osterweil, a research director in&nbsp;Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Comparative Media&nbsp;Studies program and creative director of the school's Education Arcade initiative to explore how games can be used to promote learning. &nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1njWQWu" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story at <em>Scientific American</em></a></p>
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<p>RESOURCES:</p>
<p><strong>MIT SHASS Bookshelf</strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/PPa5ts" target="_blank">New knowledge,&nbsp;innovation,&nbsp;and insight</a><br />
<br />
<strong>TOUR de SHASS</strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/17Zk5Ia" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Explore MIT's humanities, arts and social science fields</a><br />
<br />
<strong>The Power of the Humanities at MIT</strong><br />
Op-Ed by Deborah K. Fitzgerald,&nbsp;Kenan Sahin Dean<br />
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences<em>&nbsp;</em><br />
<a href="http://shass.mit.edu/news/news-2014-power-humanities-mit-commentary-dean-deborah-fitzgerald" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">More</a></p>
<p><strong>MIT SHASS social media</strong><br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/MIT.SHASS" target="_blank">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/mit_shass" target="_blank">Twitter</a><br />
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Africa, Arts, Awards, honors and fellowships, Books and authors, Diversity, Economics, Faculty, Health care, Humanities, Literature, languages and writing, Linguistics, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Music, Philosophy, Political science, Race and gender, Research, Security studies and military, Social sciences, SHASS, Global Studies and LanguagesSaid and Done for September 2014 http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-september-2014-0930
Digest of the MIT humanities, arts, and social sciencesTue, 30 Sep 2014 18:01:02 -0400Emily Hiestand | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-september-2014-0930<p><em>Published monthly during the School terms, and once in the summer,&nbsp;</em>Said and Done<em>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;photo-rich digest from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with news and&nbsp;research to give a distilled overview of the school's endeavors. For the complete online edition, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/Xc0pBJ" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Said and Done</a>. Highlights of the September 2014 edition include:</em><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
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<p>LINGUISTICS&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Steriade elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America</strong><br />
The honor recognizes a lifetime of accomplishment and intellectual leadership. MIT&nbsp;Professor of Linguistics&nbsp;Donca Steriade is the fifth member of the MIT faculty to be named an LSA Fellow, joining her colleagues&nbsp;Irene Heim&nbsp;and&nbsp;David Pesetsky,&nbsp;and Institute Professors emeritus&nbsp;Morris Halle&nbsp;and&nbsp;Noam Chomsky.&nbsp;Of the&nbsp;110 LSA Fellows&nbsp;named since the honor was initiated in 2006, 30 — slightly more than a quarter — are MIT Linguistics&nbsp;PhDs.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1qSA8Vs" target="_blank">Announcement</a>&nbsp;| <a href="http://bit.ly/1qSAY4u" target="_blank">MIT&nbsp;News Archive: Steriade and Morris Halle</a><br />
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<p>HISTORY<br />
<strong>Wilder receives the 2014 Michael Harrington Book Award</strong><br />
The American Political Science Association awarded MIT Professor of History Craig Steven Wilder the 2014 Michael Harrington Award, given for&nbsp;an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1nUWbGb" target="_blank">About the Award</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/12laH0k" target="_blank">Wilder webpage</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>LITERATURE&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Why study medieval literature at MIT? Reason #1: T</strong><strong>ime Travel</strong><br />
In this 3-minute video, Arthur Bahr, MIT Associate Professor of Literature, transports viewers into an earlier version of our world, recites Old English, and identifies sources that inspired Tolkein.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1mWHOoD" target="_blank">Video</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>HISTORY + INTERNATIONAL POLITICS<br />
<strong>The history man&nbsp;</strong>|&nbsp;<strong>Francis Gavin&nbsp;</strong><br />
Nuclear security expert Francis Gavin brings the lens of history to the study of international politics.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/UZuiV8" target="_blank">Story by Peter Dizikes,&nbsp;MIT News</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>NEW MIT SHASS PUBLICATIONS&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Bookshelf&nbsp;</strong><br />
"#!" (pronounced "shebang"),&nbsp;by Nick Montfort<strong> </strong>(Counterpath, 2014); "Aboutness," by Stephen Yablo (Princeton University Press, 2014); "Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity," by&nbsp;Kathleen Thelen (Cambridge University Press, 2014)&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/PPa5ts" style="line-height: 1.6; color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Take a look</a><br />
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<p>PHILOSOPHY&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Likely the funniest hour you will ever spend listening to a discussion on&nbsp;normative philosophy</strong><br />
MIT SHASS Associate Professor of Philosophy Caspar Hare&nbsp;on "Ask the Expert"&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://ow.ly/BhIgV" target="_blank">Listen</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE | INTERNATIONAL TRADE<br />
<strong>Bringing big data to bear on international trade</strong>&nbsp;|<strong>&nbsp;In Song Kim&nbsp;</strong><br />
MIT Assistant Professor of Political Science Kim finds that the way firms lobby government on trade policy — pushing for more protectionism or more liberalization — depends on how unique their products are.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1wjO7nA" target="_blank">Story by Eric Smalley</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>LITERATURE&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Inspired readings&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;Arthur Bahr</strong><br />
MIT Professor of Literature Bahr makes medieval literature come alive.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1oLkwNz" target="_blank">Story by Peter Dizikes,&nbsp;MIT</a><a href="http://bit.ly/1oLkwNz" target="_blank">&nbsp;News</a></p>
<p>HISTORY OF SCIENCE + PHYSICS<br />
<strong>Is time travel possible? What shape is the universe? What's the deal with wormholes? </strong><br />
MIT historian of science and physicist David Kaiser anchors the inaugural "Ask Me Anything" column for&nbsp;<em>Hippo Reads</em>, an academia-centered online magazine.</p>
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<div><a href="http://bit.ly/1lT7Yte" target="_blank">Column at Hippo Reads</a>&nbsp;+&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/1xSiwhk" target="_blank">Commentary by Wade Roush at KSJ@MIT blog</a><br />
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<strong>Forthcoming&nbsp;MIT Music &amp; Theater Arts Events</strong><br />
Fall events include musical performances by Eviyan, the Jupiter Quartet,&nbsp;the Mysore Brothers, Seth Josel, the Ellipsis Trio,&nbsp;Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams, the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and others, plus a theater production of "Philoctetes" by John Jesurun, the McArthur-winning contemporary author and director. &nbsp;</div>
<p><a dir="ltr" href="http://bit.ly/1p7R5FI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/1p7R5FI">Complete MTA events calendar</a><br />
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<p>ECONOMICS&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Making the case for Keynes&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;Peter Temin&nbsp;</strong><br />
Temin's new book explains how the ideas of John Maynard Keynes relate to today's global economy, and&nbsp;makes the case that Keynesian deficit spending by governments is necessary to reignite the levels of growth that Europe and the world had come to expect prior to the economic downturn of 2008.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1tZO1j3" target="_blank">Story by Peter Dizikes,&nbsp;MIT News</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>HISTORY + ECONOMICS&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Tech Lessons from the Dark Ages</strong><br />
The so-called "Dark Ages" (476-1000 A.D)&nbsp;generated great technological advances. MIT historian&nbsp;Anne McCants explains. &nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://onforb.es/1Cg0l4Q" target="_blank">Article in Forbes</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Strategy, Doctrine, Organizing Principle</strong><br />
MIT&nbsp;Professor of Political Science Barry Posen and&nbsp;Andrew Ross of the Naval War College capture the debate on U.S. intervention in times of crisis&nbsp;in a 50-page article in&nbsp;<em>International Security</em>, the most prestigious outlet in the field for rigorous analysis.<br />
<a href="http://huff.to/1yd4hnq" target="_blank">Story at The Huffington Post</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
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<p>SHASS ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE<br />
<strong>Coco Fusco and Marjorie Liu</strong><br />
A New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer,&nbsp;Fusco will serve as a visiting associate professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing.&nbsp;Marjorie Liu, an attorney and bestselling author of 17 novels,&nbsp;will teach the "Genre Writing Workshop" in Comparative Media Studies/Writing. &nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1s1sw5e" target="_blank">More + brief biographies at CMS/Website</a></p>
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<p><strong>The Listening Room&nbsp;</strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/PMgAS8" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">MIT's finest music online</a></p>
<p><strong>TOUR de SHASS online</strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/17Zk5Ia" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Explore MIT's humanities, arts, and social science fields</a></p>
<p><strong>MIT SHASS social media</strong><br />
<a href="http://on.fb.me/YcyAs1" target="_blank">Facebook</a>&nbsp; | &nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/mit_shass" target="_blank">Twitter</a></p>
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Arts, Awards, honors and fellowships, Economics, Faculty, History, Humanities, Center for International Studies, Literature, languages and writing, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Political science, Research, Books and authors, Social sciences, SHASSSaid and Done for Summer 2014http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-summer-2014
Digest of the MIT humanities, arts, and social sciencesMon, 11 Aug 2014 17:27:01 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/said-and-done-summer-2014<p>Published monthly during the School terms, and once in the summer,&nbsp;Said and Done<em>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;photo-rich digest from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with news and&nbsp;research to give a distilled overview of the school's endeavors. For the complete online edition, visit&nbsp;<a href="http://bit.ly/SDAug" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Said and Done</a>. Highlights of the Summer 2014 edition include:</em></p>
<p>HISTORY<br />
<strong>The Historian's Lab&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;Christopher Capozzola</strong><br />
"For historians our laboratories are libraries and archives. It’s where we play around with the raw materials, where we make discoveries. We experiment. We put one set of theoretical ideas about how society is structured, how culture works, next to the raw data — that might be a set of letters, or oral histories — in the same way that a chemist puts a theory against a particular set of chemicals in a reaction."<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1u8mJLH" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Story by Laurie Everett for Spectrum Continuum</a></p>
<p>LANGUAGE&nbsp;AND NATION-BUILDING&nbsp;<br />
<strong style="line-height:1.6">A Creole solution for Haiti's Woes</strong><span style="line-height:1.6">&nbsp;|&nbsp;</span><strong style="line-height:1.6">Michel DeGraff</strong><span style="line-height:1.6">&nbsp;</span><strong style="line-height:1.6">and Molly Ruggles&nbsp;</strong><br />
In a piece for&nbsp;<em>The New York Times</em>, Professor of Linguistics Michel DeGraff and Molly Ruggles, Senior Educational Technology Consultant at MIT OEIT, write of the need for Haitian students to learn in Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), rather than in French, which is spoken by only 5 percent of the Haitian population. “Creole holds the potential to democratize knowledge, and thus liberate the masses from extreme poverty,” DeGraff and Ruggles explain.<br />
<a href="http://nyti.ms/1sf8eCQ" target="_blank">Commentary in <em>The New York Times</em></a></p>
<p>ECONOMICS&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Q&amp;A&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;David Autor on U.S. inequality issues among the “99 percent”</strong><br />
In an article in&nbsp;<em>Science</em>, MIT economist Autor moves the U.S. inequality discussion beyond the 1 percent vs. 99 percent comparison. In the long run, he says, "the best policies we have to combat inequality involve investing in our citizenry. Higher education, and public education, is America’s best idea. Those investments also include preschool, good primary&nbsp;and secondary schools, and adequate nutrition&nbsp;and health care."<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1jbkGuU" target="_self">Story by Peter Dizikes for MIT News</a></p>
<p><strong>SHASS announces the 2014 Levitan Awards for Excellence in Teaching</strong><br />
The 2014 Levitan Awards recognize nine outstanding teachers, nominated by students.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1mXryzG" target="_self">Story</a><br />
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KNIGHT SCIENCE JOURNALISM PROGRAM AT MIT&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum to head Knight Science Journalism at MIT&nbsp;</strong><br />
<strong>Wade Roush is Interim Director&nbsp;</strong><br />
Deborah Blum will join MIT in 2015 as the director of Knight Science Journalism at MIT, a fellowship program that enables superb mid-career journalists to spend a year at MIT studying everything from science and technology to history, literature, policy, and political science.&nbsp;Blum will assume the role in July 2015. During the 2014-15 academic year, the KSJ program will be led by Wade Roush, former editor-at-large at the online innovation news service Xconomy.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/deborah-blum-knight-science-journalism-director" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Story</a><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;</strong><a href="http://bit.ly/1pxt0M2" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">From Wade Roush's blog: "Back to the Future at MIT"</a></p>
<p>MUSIC + ENGINEERING&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Gamma sonification</strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong>MIT students make music from particle energy</strong><br />
Midway through Keeril Makan's “Introduction to Composition” class, three MIT nuclear engineering students had invented a technique to create sound textures from the energy of the decaying atom.&nbsp;<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/U03RyP" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_self">Story</a></p>
<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE&nbsp;<br />
<strong>3 Questions&nbsp;</strong>|&nbsp;<strong>Johannes Haushofer on the psychology of poverty</strong><br />
Does a mental “feedback loop” prevent the poorest from exploring ways to change their lives?<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1mcsD5z" target="_self">Story by Peter Dizikes for MIT News</a></p>
<p>INNOVATION<br />
<strong style="line-height:1.6">The online SHASS Guide to Innovation in Education &nbsp;</strong><br />
This new four-part websection includes a trove of information and resources about teaching innovation in our School. The section is designed for use by SHASS faculty who are thinking about developing a&nbsp;new class, or a new approach in an existing class. Information includes funding sources; guidelines and timelines; awards given; and examples of successful endeavors.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1jzUdhy" target="_blank">Explore&nbsp;</a><br />
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SCIENCE WRITING&nbsp;<br />
<strong>The New Yorker &nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;One of a Kind&nbsp;</strong>|<strong>&nbsp;Seth Mnookin&nbsp;</strong><br />
What do you do if your child has an ultra-rare condition that is new to science?" In this&nbsp;<em>New Yorker</em>&nbsp;essay, Mnookin, co-director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing, explores how open science, next-generation sequencing, social media, and families are affecting the way rare diseases are discovered, studied, and treated.<br />
<a href="http://nyr.kr/1wGMuyW" target="_blank">Article in <em>The New Yorker</em></a><em> </em>(<em>paywall removed for the summer</em>) |&nbsp;<a href="http://wgbhnews.org/post/bpr-politics-market-basket-all-revved-pointless-neighborhood-happiness-seth-mnookin" style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Audio interview on WBUR</a></p>
<p>COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES / WRITING<br />
<strong>Coco Fusco joins MIT SHASS as an MLK Visiting Scholar for 2014-15</strong><br />
The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is honored and excited to welcome the acclaimed artist and writer Coco Fusco&nbsp;to the MIT community for the 2014-15 academic year.&nbsp;Fusco will serve as a visiting associate professor in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W) program. She will be hosted by Edward Schiappa, the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities&nbsp;and head of CMS/W, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/1iJx8Zm" target="_self">Story </a></p>
<p><strong>Bookshelf</strong><br />
The research of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences appears principally in the form of books, publications, and music and theater productions. These gems of the School provide new knowledge and analysis, innovation and insight, guidance for policy, and nourishment for lives.<br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/PPa5ts" target="_blank">Take a look</a></p>
<p><strong>The Listening Room </strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/PMgAS8" target="_blank">MIT's finest music online</a></p>
<p><strong>TOUR de SHASS online</strong><br />
<a href="http://bit.ly/17Zk5Ia" target="_blank">Explore MIT's humanities, arts, and social science fields</a></p>
History, Science writing, Music, Awards, honors and fellowships, Linguistics, Political science, Economics, Literature, languages and writing, Anthropology, Faculty, Students, Research, Humanities, Social sciences, Arts, SHASSWyn Kelley sails on the Charles W. Morgan http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/wyn-kelley-sails-whaling-ship-0801
MIT Melville scholar travels on the last surviving U.S. whaleship from Melville&#039;s era.Fri, 01 Aug 2014 12:50:01 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/wyn-kelley-sails-whaling-ship-0801<p>Wyn Kelley has spent more than 30 years studying the works of Herman Melville — particularly his seminal whaling novel "Moby-Dick"&nbsp;— so she was thrilled to get the chance this summer to sail aboard an actual whaling ship.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Chosen from more than 300 applicants, Kelley, a senior lecturer in literature at MIT, was one of about 80 people who&nbsp;participated in a public-history project associated with the 38th&nbsp;voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, the oldest surviving whaling ship in the country. Recently refitted, the&nbsp;Mystic Seaport&nbsp;vessel made its first voyage in more than 90 years this summer, plying the New England coastline and docking in various ports.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">“This is one of only a few historic ships still sailing,” says Kelley, who spent the night of July 7 aboard the ship and then sailed with the Morgan from New Bedford, Mass., to Provincetown, Mass., the next day. “It was built in 1841 in same shipyard as the ship Melville sailed on.”</span></p>
<p><strong>Melville for engineers and scientists</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Long before cellphones began capturing signals, and before radio, WiFi, and GPS instrumentation, “they that go down to the sea in ships” had to know how to read the wind, water, and sky to navigate. The physical world is therefore a dominating presence in Melville’s works, and one that Kelley was keen to experience, not least so that she could share it with her MIT students.</span></p>
<p>Reflecting on her years teaching at MIT, Kelley notes that “engineers tend to think of texts, including literature, as a different kind of information from the sort they deal with when thinking about how a cell tower will behave in a storm or how materials achieve equilibrium in a structure.” But, she adds, as MIT students discover, “'Moby-Dick'&nbsp;is full of the very same physical forces that engineers and scientists study and manipulate."</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Indeed, Melville’s novel is steeped in what we now call </span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">science, technology, engineering, and math, or&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">STEM, fields — from the novelist’s categorization of whale species to his descriptions of the physical power of water, wind, and lightning. “There’s a lot of science in the book,” Kelley says.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">On the Morgan this summer, as she walked the decks, hauled lines, and watched the crew adjust the heavy Egyptian cotton and flax sails, Kelley mentally compared the experience to Melville’s descriptions. “So often on the ship, I was thinking about how different reading a book about a voyage is from being on a ship and experiencing the weather, and all the impact on the body,” she says. This “reading” of the physical environment is critical to the history of how humans understand the world, Kelley notes.</span></p>
<p><strong style="line-height:1.6">A 19th-century writer with a modern, global imagination&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Too often, Kelley says, readers approach "Moby-Dick"&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">with trepidation, intimidated by its reputation — and length. “They walk into it like walking into a dentist’s office,” she says, but emerge with a great understanding of why "Moby-Dick"</span><em style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;</em><span style="line-height: 1.6;">has stood the test of time: Like the works of Shakespeare, the book reflects the human condition in a way that transcends its own period in history.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">“Students identify with it because there are so many classical conflicts in the book,” Kelley says. “The sailors are trying to survive with a crazy captain and an awful job. They see Queequeg, the ‘savage’ harpooner, trying to learn a new language and understand the culture, Captain Ahab looking for certainty in an empty universe, the narrator Ishmael trying to make sense of it all. It’s very close to people’s experience of college.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">In fact, many of Melville’s themes are surprisingly modern: He advocated&nbsp;a broad-minded view of humanity that undercut&nbsp;the strong lines of class, race, and religion that dominated his era. He even expressed&nbsp;concern for the environment and the fate of the whale population. “He had a global imagination,” Kelley says, born in large part of his experience in whaling, an industry where the population was constantly changing and skill meant more than nationality or language.</span></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.6;">Pleasure and imaginative space&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Yet "Moby-Dick"</span><em style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;</em><span style="line-height: 1.6;">is a triumph not simply because of its classic quest narrative or its universal themes, but because of Melville’s humor, wit, and extraordinary use of language. Above all, the novel has endured because it’s a pleasure to read.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">“'Pleasure' is a word I can’t use enough,” Kelley says. “Like games, literature releases the mind from certain habits of thinking to a play space where you can try out different identities, which is therapeutic and pleasurable.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">The joy of reading has brought Kelley back to "Moby-Dick"</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;again and again over the years. “Like Shakespeare, it keeps getting renewed,” she says, noting that the book offers fascinating insights into colonialism, Christianity, and the life of the working classes. MIT students typically also get interested in the physics of the ship and the interplay of the natural elements.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">That’s one reason Kelley chose to concentrate on the weather for her project associated with the </span>38th&nbsp;voyage&nbsp;of the Charles W. Morgan&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.6;">— a contribution to Mystic Seaport’s public education efforts that connects the Morgan and Melville with her work in new media literacies. “I was interested in wind as an information-bearing medium — wind as a form of literacy,” she says. “This is an old literacy most of us no longer use,” she adds, noting that in the modern world, information about the weather is rarely as vital as it was to whalers and others in the 19th century.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Nevertheless, Kelley — whose work in new media includes serving as associate director of the&nbsp;</span><a href="http://mel.hofstra.edu/" style="line-height: 1.6;">Melville Electronic Library</a><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;and helping to create an interactive online map of all the geographic locations in Melville’s works — sees parallels between whaling and modern global businesses, which similarly depend on unseen forces (electricity rather than weather) that humans attempt to control with varying degrees of success.</span></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.6;">Narrative and&nbsp;</strong><strong style="line-height: 1.6;">engineering systems&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Discovering such seemingly unlikely parallels is part of what makes Melville — and literature in general — so endlessly fascinating, Kelley says, noting that MIT students often realize that exploring the depth and complexity of human systems through literature is not that different from studying engineering.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">“Narratives present problems that call upon the same abilities that MIT students are using elsewhere; they’re entering another kind of system where language and storytelling set up problems for them to solve,” Kelley says. “Narratives have design, and students realize it’s not an add-on — it’s integrated; the same principles of design govern the building of a bridge.” Such parallels help students integrate humanities with their other MIT studies and realize the relevance of such subjects.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Kelley is now considering what final form her 38th voyage project will take, and is looking forward to sharing her experience of life aboard a 19th-century whaler. “If I can bring just a little bit of this back to the classroom, it will be incredibly worthwhile,” she says.</span></p>
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<em>Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer, Associate News Manager: Kathryn O'Neill</em><br />
<em>Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski&nbsp;</em></h5>
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MIT Melville scholar Wyn Kelley with the Charles W. Morgan in dock.Humanities, Literature, languages and writingTom Hughes: Remembering a non-lifer http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/tom-hughes-remembering-non-lifer
Professor Rosalind Williams recalls a colleague who pioneered the field of the history of technology.Tue, 03 Jun 2014 15:00:01 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/tom-hughes-remembering-non-lifer<p><span style="font-size:10px;"><i style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">Thomas Hughes, a&nbsp;Distinguished&nbsp;Visiting Professor at MIT&nbsp;and Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, passed away Feb.&nbsp;3, 2014 at age 89.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1; ">Hughes, who pioneered the field of the history of technology, was also a founder of the Society&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 14px; ">for</span><span style="line-height: 1; ">&nbsp;the History of Technology.&nbsp;</span>Below is a reflection on his life and contributions by his MIT colleague&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1; ">Rosalind Williams, the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology.&nbsp;</span></i></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">MIT is justifiably proud of its “lifers”:&nbsp;individuals who enter MIT as freshmen, continue here for graduate school, join the faculty, and live out their entire professional lives under the Great Dome.&nbsp;In some cases — Paul Gray and Sheila Widnall come to mind — the character of the individual becomes so intertwined with the character of the Institute that it becomes hard to know where one stops and the other begins.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Thomas Parke Hughes (1923-2014) was a non-lifer.&nbsp;He came to MIT in the 1960s for a short stint as an assistant professor.&nbsp;He soon moved on to other institutions, where over time he developed into the nation’s pre-eminent historian of technology.&nbsp;When he returned to MIT as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the 1990s and early 2000s, he brought with him a deep understanding of how the history of technology transforms our understanding of general history, as well as of the role and responsibilities of engineering.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Would he have developed such perspectives if he had spent his whole career at MIT?&nbsp;This is an unanswerable question, but without question Tom Hughes reminds us of the invigorating role of non-lifers in our community.</span></p>
<p><strong>The nation's pre-eminent historian of technology&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Born and raised in Richmond, Va., Thomas Parke Hughes served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before earning his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia.&nbsp;He stayed there to get his doctorate in modern European history in 1953. Tom came to MIT in the mid-1960s, when the relatively new School of Humanities and Social Science was trying to figure out how to stock a faculty for an amorphous Course XXI.&nbsp;He was part of a cohort of 13 junior faculty; only one of them (Bruce Mazlish, in history) was ultimately tenured.&nbsp;Along with the rest, Tom departed MIT, first for a temporary appointment at Johns Hopkins University and then for a professorship at Southern Methodist University.</span></p>
<p>At SMU, Tom published a biography of Elmer Sperry (1971), still valuable reading for anyone interested in engineering control systems and their role in 20th-century history.&nbsp;Primarily on the strength of this acclaimed study, he was invited to become a professor in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was 50 years old when he accepted the appointment, which elevated both him and the department to academic fame and glory.&nbsp;Graduate students applied to Penn to work with Tom, and the Philadelphia area became a magnet for historians of technology.</p>
<p><strong>Conceptualizing technological systems,</strong><strong>&nbsp;defining structures of modern life&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Tom sealed his pre-eminence in the field with the 1983 publication of "Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930."</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;This was more than a comparative history of electrification in the United States, Britain, and Germany:&nbsp;It was also a manifesto declaring the concept of technological systems, which reoriented the history of technology from a focus on the invention of devices to a focus on the construction of large complex systems. Because such systems are defining structures of modern life, this reorientation confirmed the history of technology as an element of general history.</span></p>
<p>Tom began to write for broader audiences, most notably in "American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970"&nbsp;(1989), which was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in history. Also in 1990, Tom returned to MIT as a visiting professor.&nbsp;He taught here for a semester and returned for shorter visits to help supervise graduate students and to run workshops on technological systems. The latter involved faculty from across the Institute, especially from the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and from the School of Engineering.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>An enduring affinity for MIT</strong></p>
<p>After retiring from Penn in 1994, Tom was elevated to Distinguished Visiting Professor at MIT, and spent even more time here.&nbsp;In 1998, he was on campus for two months giving a series of lectures on "open technological systems," which he defined as ones exhibiting “a complex mix of technical, economic, political, social, and environmental factors.” His favorite example was the Central Artery and Tunnel (CAT, better known as Boston’s “Big Dig”), with Fred Salvucci playing the role as chief system-builder.&nbsp;The CAT, along with the SAGE computer-based defense system and&nbsp;ARPANET, were featured in Tom’s book "Rescuing Prometheus"&nbsp;(1998), an influential cluster of case studies of open technological systems.</p>
<p>In a 2002 email to Philip Khoury (then dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences)&nbsp;requesting a renewal of his visiting appointment, Tom wrote:&nbsp;"I am so pleased to have the MIT appointment.&nbsp;For years, even decades, I have felt close to MIT, sharing its notable achievements and sensing its problems and opportunities."</p>
<p>He went on to explain why he felt this closeness: "Over the years, I have tried to understand the character of the engineering profession and, in a limited way, broaden its horizons by helping it to see the central role and daunting responsibilities that it has in the modern world.&nbsp;Engineers lament that they are not appreciated.&nbsp;They do not need the appreciation of others so much as they need secure self-esteem.&nbsp;This would come, I believe, if they accepted the messy complexity and moral dimensions of their calling."</p>
<p><strong>Technology as a part of a broader human history</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Tom was already engaged with the problems and opportunities of engineering when I first met him in the mid-1960s, as a Radcliffe College senior serving him as a research assistant.&nbsp;I enjoyed visiting Tom to discuss my assignments, but the questions he asked me to research were sober and difficult.&nbsp;The imprint of World War II was pronounced. He was already studying the Manhattan Project as an engineering project, a topic he later wrote about in "American Genesis."</span><span style="line-height: 1.6;">&nbsp;He was also, with obvious emotional difficulty, trying to understand the mechanisms of slaughter used in the Holocaust. Many years later I heard him discuss in a seminar the concept of “technological sin” as something both historians and engineers need to contemplate, because the historical world is a sinful one.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6;">Like William Barton Rogers himself, Tom Hughes came to MIT from Virginia with a vision of what technology and engineering mean in the broad context of human experience.&nbsp;Providing scholarly grounding for that vision was a difficult problem — but Tom would quote Sperry to the effect that he chose the most difficult problems because doing this was a way to avoid vulgar competition.</span></p>
<p>It took Tom many years in the academic wilderness to redefine technological systems and engineering practice as part of larger history.&nbsp;These views do not come naturally to MIT. We have too much invested in defining engineering as a specialized or semispecialized activity that brings order and moral clarity to the world.&nbsp;But engineering cannot assume “the central role and daunting responsibilities that it has in the modern world” unless we confront its messy complexities and moral ambiguities.&nbsp;They inevitably arise because engineering is inseparable from political, economic, social, and legal structures and activities. By reminding us of this broad historical perspective, Tom Hughes, MIT non-lifer, made an immeasurable contribution to the life of the Institute.</p>
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<h5><em>Prepared by&nbsp;MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Communication and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Associate News Manager: Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski&nbsp;</em></h5>
Thomas Parke Hughes (1923-2014), a Distinguished Visiting Professor at MIT and the nation's pre-eminent historian of technology.Faculty, Humanities, Technology and society, ObituariesA new kind of media theoryhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/profile-fox-harrell-0522
MIT professor Fox Harrell works to enrich the subjective and ethical dimensions of the digital media experience.Thu, 22 May 2014 00:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/profile-fox-harrell-0522<p>Unlike most people, MIT’s Fox Harrell knew what he wanted to do in life from a young age. According to Harrell, an associate professor of digital media who studies self-expression in online media and creates tools to help developers add depth to their work, the impetus for his career came from an epiphany he had one day while doing computer programming as a kid in San Diego.</p>
<p>“You heard a lot about TV turning people into couch potatoes, so I thought, ‘Whatever comes next, I would like to be a voice for the social and ethical dimension of that form,’” Harrell says. “I couldn’t have predicted the exact form it would take, but that [moment] sparked the direction I would go in.”</p>
<p>Or directions, since Harrell occupies an unusual spot in academic research, with an appointment in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as well as in its program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing. In his research group, the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE), Harrell and his students take formal analyses of thought — developed in cognitive science, psychology, sociology, and other fields — and develop computational programs that can be applied to computer games, social media, and other forms of emergent media.</p>
<p>The idea is to imbue such media with the same opportunities for self-expression and social reflection that are present in literature, film, and other areas of culture. The programs Harrell develops take many forms, but often add layers of nuance to, say, interactions between characters in games, or social media experiences.</p>
<p>“We try to make works that can engender critical thought, conceptual change, or even social change,” Harrell says.</p>
<p>Harrell detailed this approach to enriching digital media, and many of his other research projects, in a recent book, “Phantasmal Media,” published in November by MIT Press. For his research and teaching, Harrell earned tenure at MIT during the last academic year.</p>
<p><strong>Student with a plan</strong></p>
<p>Not long after Harrell had his youthful epiphany about new media, he also knew that he wanted his education to span both computing and the humanities.</p>
<p>“At a pretty early age, I knew I wanted to pursue these interdisciplinary topics,” he recalls. Harrell attended Carnegie Mellon University as an undergraduate because he could study logic and computation, a field in which he received a BS, while simultaneously obtaining a BFA, with a focus in electronic media. Harrell got a master’s degree in interactive telecommunications from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, then a PhD in computer science and cognitive science from the University of California at San Diego.</p>
<p>“At each stage it was not just happenstance, it was [a matter of] coming up with a plan, with as much rigor as I could, to synthesize these things,” Harrell says. He first took a job as an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, then joined MIT in 2010.</p>
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<p>To get a sense of the programs that Harrell and his ICE lab build, consider Chimeria, a platform that, as he describes it, “lets you build narratives, for games or in social media, involving identities that fit multiple categories, in a fluid way.”</p>
<p>Harrell demonstrates how Chimeria could be applied to an online game: In this case, in a game called Gatekeeper, a medieval traveler tries to gain entry to a castle, and is peppered with questions from a guard, who recognizes that the traveler is not from the local social group. Harrell’s guest answers those questions agreeably, with the goal of gaining access to the castle.</p>
<p>But what is the psychological nature of such an interaction? One of the features of Chimeria is to get game-players to think a little more about that kind of question.</p>
<p>“You could feel positive about [gaining entry to the castle], but you could also feel negative about it, like you had to change yourself to fit it,” Harrell observes. “There are different valences besides the outcome. One of the aims is to help people think critically about some of these nuances of self-imagination. Your social identity could involve gender or ethnicity, but it could [also] be something about your personality, or way of dressing, or way of communicating.”</p>
<p>A long-term aim of the ICE group is to build a series of tools like Chimeria, which programmers and developers can then apply to the games — or other media forms — they build. As Harrell notes, the greater richness of these interactions helps game developers find way to provide more iterations of each game, something the industry likes.</p>
<p>“We’re also dealing with the design issue of providing alternate dialogue depending how you play the game,” Harrell notes.</p>
<p><strong>Embedding rich ideas in screen life</strong></p>
<p>In building such programs, Harrell is not just linking computation and arts; he is also drawing on research from the social sciences. Some of the themes in Chimeria, for instance, explore ground mapped by the famed 20th-century sociologist Erving Goffman, who wrote extensively about strategic public presentation, among other topics.</p>
<p>In a sense, some of Harrell’s intellectual work involves recognizing which social-science concepts could be developed on the programming side of his work.</p>
<p>“These are rich ideas that come out of sociology and the humanities that aren’t represented computationally yet,” Harrell says. “They provide some core concepts, grounded in theory, that we can then implement in these systems.”</p>
<p>Next year, Harrell will dive further into his interdisciplinary research, as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he will continue to develop new tools that can help people add nuance to the digital-media experience. In Harrell’s estimation, there are increasing numbers of thinkers working in the field —&nbsp;but the discipline is still small enough that his own efforts, he believes, can help to develop “computational media systems that can achieve greater social, and aesthetic, and affective resonance.”</p>
Fox HarrellFaculty, Profile, Computation, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Computer science and technology, Media, Gaming, Video games, HumanitiesBruno Perreau examines the politics of adoption in France http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/bruno-perreau-examines-politics-adoption-france
A lens for views on gender, parenthood, and &quot;Frenchness.&quot;Thu, 08 May 2014 00:45:01 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/bruno-perreau-examines-politics-adoption-france<p>On May 18, 2013, France legalized same-sex marriage, and simultaneously, adoption by homosexual couples. During the lead-up to President François Hollande signing the act into law, opposition protests erupted across France. Nearly a year later, demonstrations against the law continue to occur, with protestors claiming the French government is "family-phobic," or opposed to the traditional family structure of man, woman, and children.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">Bruno Perreau, an associate professor of French studies in the Foreign Languages and Literatures section,&nbsp;says that&nbsp;the outrcy from the French public is, in part, stirred by concerns with homosexuality itself. However, he says, the protests also point&nbsp;to deeper issues, in particular French citizens' discomfort with how the new law challenges widely held, traditional French values in the overlapping realms of gender, parenthood, and citizenship.</span><br />
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<strong style="line-height: 1.6em;">Adoption politics in France reveal complex ideas about identity&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Perreau explores this territory in his forthcoming book "The Politics of Adoption: Gender and the Making of French Citizenship"<em>&nbsp;</em>(MIT Press, June 2014), a revised, English version of his 2012 book, "Penser l'adoption, La gouvernance pastorale du genre"&nbsp;(Presses Universitaires de France).&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">“French adoption policies are actually the perfect inroad to understanding the basis for French ideologies related to these complex issues,” Perreau says. “That’s because French policies link adoption to citizenship.&nbsp;</span><strong style="line-height: 1.6em;">'</strong><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">Being adopted by a country' [citizenship]&nbsp;is a metaphor rooted in the idea of 'parenthood.' Adoption policies also simultaneously reflect and reinforce this metaphor by further relating it&nbsp;to gender norms.” &nbsp;</span></p>
<p>In "The Politics of Adoption<em>,"&nbsp;</em>Perreau&nbsp;chronicles the evolution of French adoption laws on the national level, as well as in European jurisprudence, and illustrates how these norms have influenced public perception about the family and gender roles in French society. He also explores how ingrained cultural and political norms have resulted in ongoing obstacles to adoption and parenting inequality across France.</p>
<p><strong>The family and the state</strong></p>
<p>France’s constitutional history differs from that of the United States in that its oldest legal texts are in family law. Consequently, the most stable cultural reference in France is a specific interpretation of the family’s function:&nbsp;to raise children in such a way that they become good children of the nation, and hence good French citizens.<br />
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“When you have a child in France, whether adopted or not, you find that the state very much oversees what you're doing with your child,” Perreau says. “In the U.S., the family is essentially a unit that has a much stronger sense of autonomy than it does in France.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Comparing U.S. and French customs, Perreau notes that in the U.S. a person's value as a citizen stems from how one is regarded&nbsp;within the&nbsp;community — which starts with the family, but also radiates to include the neighborhood, school, church, and so on. In France, the only&nbsp;community that confers standing as a citizen,&nbsp;apart from the nation itself, is the family. Given that tradition, any amendments to laws regarding the family immediately trigger strong reactions.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">“The legalization of gay marriage not only transforms the way people can be legally connected to one another in France,” Perreau says. “It also redefines the model of citizenship, or essentially what it means to be an ideal French citizen.”</span></p>
<p><strong>A flexible system?&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">The adoption process in France is theoretically a very flexible system where children can be adopted two ways. The first method is called plenary adoption — or full adoption — when&nbsp;adoptive parents legally replace biological ones, similar to the U.S. adoption system.</span></p>
<p>France also offers another form of adoption that doesn't exist in the U.S., which&nbsp;allows a child to have up to four parents. In this&nbsp;method,&nbsp;called simple&nbsp;adoption,&nbsp;adoptive parents join birth ones on the child's birth certificate, although only one set of parents raise the child. Legally speaking,&nbsp;the difference between the sexes is not a condition for adoption, and single parents have the opportunity to adopt children.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">In "The Politics of Adoption,"&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">however, Perreau argues that what is perceived to be a flexible adoption system is, in reality, a parochial one: Most social workers, he says, act as adoption&nbsp;gatekeepers, and grant children only to those candidates who they interpret as best upholding French values regarding gender and parenthood. This practice limits the number of French citizens who qualify to become adoptive parents.</span></p>
<p>“If you were to ask most social workers what they expect from an adoption candidate, they&nbsp;would say they&nbsp;expect very clearly defined gender roles,” Perreau says. “That is, the candidate would have to behave either masculinely or femininely in accordance with their sex, and in addition, they would say both sexes must, in some way,&nbsp;be represented, for the child’s best interest.” &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">For example, if a single woman wanted to adopt a child, some social workers would inquire what role a man would serve in the child’s upbringing. The difference between homosexual and heterosexual candidates is that a single heterosexual candidate could eventually have a partner who would fulfill the vacant gender role. By contrast,&nbsp;a homosexual candidate is perceived, by virtue of being gay, to refute the traditional French idea that certain valuable qualities are exclusive to, and inherent to, each sex. Social workers further believe that all of the "male" and "female" qualities must be present to properly raise a child — and an exemplary French citizen.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">“The view is very much a binary model, with authority at one end and protection at the other, as if these two&nbsp;qualities and capacities are not&nbsp;related, and often impossible to disentangle within a&nbsp;person,”&nbsp;Perreau says.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.6em;">Cultural interpretations</strong></p>
<p>Adoption creates filiation without any kind of biological connection between parents and children. Once a child is adopted into a family, their family connections — symbolically speaking — are recreated, and the child is assumed into the new family dynamic.&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">Opponents of gay marriage and adoption argue that this process is threatened if homosexual couples are allowed to adopt children. They claim that&nbsp;in this scenario,&nbsp;children would be aware that their adoptive parents could not possibly be their biological parents, a realization&nbsp;which could threaten&nbsp;a&nbsp;child's psychological balance.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">However, Perreau notes that this argument is not used to contest interracial adoption. In fact, the issue regarding race and adoption is not debated at all in France. That’s because it's considered a privilege for children from other countries to be adopted by a French family, a view that restates the superiority of French culture.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">It’s a subject Perreau hopes to&nbsp;learn more about in responses&nbsp;to his book from an American audience.&nbsp;"As well as the overall reception and interpretation of the book itself," he says, "the&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">topic of how race and immigration&nbsp;inform adoption policy&nbsp;is something that will be interesting for me to observe within an American context, since it’s not currently debated in France."&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><strong>About Bruno Perreau</strong></p>
<p>Perreau joined the MIT faculty in 2010 with a PhD&nbsp;in political science from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris. He is the author of several books on gay and lesbian studies in France, family policies, as well as the institutions of the French Fifth Republic and of the United States. Perreau was recently awarded a fellowship from the Stanford Humanities Center for the 2014-15 academic year. While at Stanford, he will work on a book on queer theory and its influence in France. Perreau has also held fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton University), the British Academy, and Cambridge University (Jesus College).&nbsp;</p>
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<h5><em>Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editor and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Writer: Kierstin Wesolowski</em><br />
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SHASS, Humanities, Faculty, France, Books and authors, Policy, PoliticsThe anthropology of humanitarianism http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/profile-anthropologist-erica-james-0501
Anthropologist Erica James examines the effectiveness of aid to those on the margins of society.Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:03 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/profile-anthropologist-erica-james-0501<p>Erica Caple James conducted her dissertation research in trying circumstances: in Haiti, following the 1994 removal of the country’s military leaders. It was a time of social conflict and discord, yet the sense of the anxiety many Haitians felt during their everyday lives was not, to James, an incidental hazard: It was the subject of her work.</p>
<p>Indeed, throughout James’ career as a medical anthropologist, she has specialized in studying people confronted with social, economic, and political uncertainty. James, now an associate professor of anthropology at MIT, has often sought to address a particular question about people placed in such difficulties: Are their psychological and civic needs being addressed by the social organizations that purport to help them?</p>
<p>Or, as James puts it, her work centers on studying “critical junctures at which human life, liberty, and equality are bound or constrained by institutions — whether for good or ill.”</p>
<p>In this vein, James’ field research in Haiti produced an award-winning 2010 book, “Democratic Insecurities,” about the post-1994 reconstruction of the country. Some aid programs, as she documents, helped Haitians recover despite a climate of violence, but other programs reconstituted social divisions or sustained what James calls a “political economy of trauma” in which citizens found financial gain in assuming victim status, and organizations profited from brokering, in James’ term, citizens’ traumas.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Now James, tenured last year, is completing a related book about Haitian immigrants in the U.S. The work examines the role and influence of organized religion, especially the Catholic Church, in assimilating Haitians into the U.S., while detailing the experiences of the aid workers active in the effort.</p>
<p>“The anthropology of humanitarianism is becoming a subdiscipline in and of itself, and I think there is an excitement in asking these kinds of questions,” James says.</p>
<p><strong>Tradition of teaching</strong></p>
<p>James grew up in a family of educators in Milwaukee, where her mother was a teacher and educational administrator and her father was a clinical psychologist; an aunt was the city’s assistant superintendent of schools at one point.</p>
<p>“I was always encouraged to pursue higher education, and my whole family was in education at one time or another,” James says. “Almost everyone on my mom’s side has been a teacher.” Her paternal relatives were equally involved in education: Her grandfather was a professor of agriculture, and her grandmother was a concert pianist and a music professor; even one of James’ great-grandfathers was a professor during Reconstruction in West Virginia.</p>
<p>James says that her own career owes something to both of her parents’ skills: her mother’s commitment to teaching and mentoring students, and her father’s work with people suffering serious problems, including schizophrenia, drug and alcohol abuse, and multiple-personality disorder.</p>
<p>“I look at anthropology as requiring the personal skills to interview people and observe human behavior, and from my father’s side, I have a more specific interest in psychological and psychiatric topics,” James explains. “It was a fascinating environment to grow up in.”</p>
<p>James studied anthropology as an undergraduate at Princeton University. She then acquired a master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School, studying the ecstatic nature of some religious experiences from a psychological perspective, earning her degree in 1995. James also became a licensed physical therapist, going to Haiti to help rehabilitate victims of social and political violence.</p>
<p>Soon James linked these interests together: She entered Harvard University’s PhD program in anthropology, and spent multiple years in Haiti during the period from 1995 to 2000, studying victims of violence. Her therapeutic work helped her gain entry into the society she was studying, in anthropological fashion; her research became the basis of her dissertation. And though few students pursued medical anthropology in the 1990s, she found important intellectual supporters in psychiatrist and anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, her principal advisor, and Paul Farmer, the influential doctor and anthropologist who founded the global medical group Partners in Health.</p>
<p>“My interest in institutional responses to victims of violence grew out of the actual therapeutic work that I participated in with survivors of violence,” James says. “All the types of education I had influenced the kinds of questions I’ve been attuned to.”</p>
<p><strong>In Boston: What happened to Haitians who left?</strong></p>
<p>The innovative, interdisciplinary nature of James’ work has been recognized by other in the field: “Democratic Insecurities” received the 2013 Gordon K. and Sybille Lewis Book Award from the Caribbean Studies Association, as well as an honorable mention for the 2011 Gregory Bateson Book prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology.</p>
<p>As a follow-up, James’ new book, titled “Wounds of Charity: Haitian Immigrants and Corporate Catholicism in Boston,” is based on the close study of the workers at a Boston-based church center founded to aid immigrants. The center was later incorporated into a network of Catholic social service agencies in Massachusetts. James is studying how both faith and charity shape the immigrants, and also how providing such services shapes the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>“The question I couldn’t answer [in the first project] was, ‘What happened to Haitians who left?’” James says. “That’s why the second project is focused more on Haitian immigrants.”</p>
<p>It is also important, she believes, to study the Catholic Church as an institution at a time when it has been hit hard by abuse scandals.</p>
<p>“The charitable work that Catholic Charities does is being promoted as the brand of the Catholic Church, in some ways helps revamp its image,” James says. “But it does play a longstanding role in providing services to so many people.”</p>
<p>James is also editing a volume of scholarly essays, titled “Faith, Charity, and the Security State,” for the School for Advanced Research Press. For her third book, she plans to study U.S.-based Muslim charities in the period after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, to see how such institutions are assessed by the U.S. government. James has already received the James A. (’45) and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities, an award to fund creative scholarship in the humanities, to help her research on that book progress. It figures to be another chapter in a career spent seeking out tough subjects of study.</p>
The work of MIT anthropologist Erica Caple James focuses on, as she puts it, “critical junctures at which human life, liberty, and equality are bound or constrained by institutions — whether for good or ill.”Haiti, Anthropology, Humanities, Faculty, Profile, Research, HumanitarianismRemi Mir &#039;17 and Daniel Stone &#039;17 win the 2014 de Courtivron Prizehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/remi-mir-and-daniel-stone-win-2014-de-courtivron-prize
SHASS prize honors cross-cultural fluency, a key to leadership in today&#039;s global world Wed, 30 Apr 2014 18:25:01 -0400http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/remi-mir-and-daniel-stone-win-2014-de-courtivron-prize<p>Remi Mir ’17 was the “odd one out” in her family — the sole native New Yorker in a family of Bengalis, the one who never seemed to fully grasp her parents’ language. Daniel Stone*&nbsp;’17 was a young&nbsp;gay man growing up in Nigeria, in a culture&nbsp;hostile to homosexuality. MIT has brought the two together as winners of the 2014&nbsp;Isabelle de Courtivron Prize for student writing.&nbsp;<br />
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“I didn’t expect to win it because,&nbsp;based on what I’ve seen,&nbsp;there are amazing writers here at MIT, and the way they tell stories, it’s almost magical,” Mir says. “To be included among the winners of the de Courtivron&nbsp;is a huge honor.”<br />
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<strong>Celebrating MIT's many voices</strong><br />
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Established in 2011 as a tribute to&nbsp;French Studies professor emerita&nbsp;Isabelle&nbsp;de Courtivron,&nbsp;the prize recognizes student writing on topics related to immigrant, diaspora, bicultural, bilingual, and/or multi-racial experiences, and&nbsp;honors cross-cultural fluency, a key to leadership and success in today's global world. The prize&nbsp;is awarded each year by the&nbsp;Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies, a program in&nbsp;MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).<br />
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“We have a very diverse population at MIT and&nbsp;it makes good sense to have a writing contest that celebrates that,” says A.C. Kemp, lecturer in English language studies and head of this year’s prize committee.&nbsp;<br />
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Entries for this year’s prize included fiction, memoirs, research, and even a piece in the form of a dictionary. Students wrote about their experiences in African, Indian, European, Asian, and Deaf&nbsp;cultures, among others. “There were a lot of beautifully written entries,” Kemp says, but Mir’s and Stone’s essays clearly stood out, and the judges’ decision to award them both prizes was unanimous.</p>
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<p><em>"Being a kid of two cultures has taught me that I don’t need to force myself to wear the 'socks' of only one culture at a time. I can mix and match and still be comfortable with who I am."</em><br />
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— from “<a href="http://bit.ly/1iuPkif" target="_blank">The Socks Don’t Have to Match</a>,” by Remi Mir ’17</p>
<p><em>"Once upon a time, I found myself in Nigeria, and I split at the seams to accommodate the gap between my cultural mindset and the country’s overall mindset."</em></p>
<p>— from “<a href="http://bit.ly/1iuOVN1" target="_blank">The Faces of Reality</a>,” by Daniel Stone ’17</p>
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<p><strong>Exploring and sharing experience through stories&nbsp;</strong><br />
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Mir and Stone are both freshmen computer science majors who say they began&nbsp;writing to explore their experiences more deeply,&nbsp;and to share them with others. “It was nice writing this essay because I didn’t even know I had this story to tell,” Mir says.&nbsp;<br />
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Her essay, “The Socks Don’t Have to Match,” explores her youthful feelings of alienation from both the Bengali culture of her family and from others in New York who picked on&nbsp;her for being “Indian.” Raised speaking Bengali and English, Mir says&nbsp;she didn’t truly find her own voice until she took Spanish in high school. “Of all the languages in the world, Spanish did that for me. It freed me from my silence,” she writes.<br />
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Remi has continued to study Spanish in SHASS and credits her professor, senior lecturer Margarita Ribas Groeger, with encouraging her to enter the de Courtivron Prize contest. “The humanities classes at MIT are a hidden gem, very strong, and taught by brilliant faculty,” she said. “I took Spanish 4 and loved it.&nbsp;I learned so much and also felt that my professor cared a great deal about us, not only as students, but also as people.”<br />
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<p><strong>The freedom in words&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Stone says he entered the de Courtivron Prize contest at the suggestion of a friend and found it gave him an opportunity to reflect on his personal journey. “Writing this essay was a way for me to come to terms with how I felt. It’s also good for others to understand what it’s like to lead a double life,” Stone says. “For the most part people just have a vague sense that I’m gay and have had a hard time in Nigeria."<br />
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In his essay, “The Faces of Reality,” Stone describes adjusting to his sexual orientation and moving from the repressive environment of his homeland to the openly multicultural world of MIT. “My fixation&nbsp;wasn’t merely on MIT’s extremely&nbsp;gay-friendly culture; it was on the unbearably beautiful idea that MIT really did exist, that it represented the possibility of a new world for me,” he writes.<br />
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Stone reveals in his essay that he first began writing because he “found so much freedom in words.” At MIT he has continued to write — both stories for himself and for the Institute Admissions Office blog. Stories are part of&nbsp;what make the humanities so important, he says. “MIT is very technical, but in every scientific breakthrough there are social implications…and developments that only the humanities perspectives can explain and make clear. The SHASS classes at MIT give you a greater scope, and the ability to see more dimensions of the world, what the world is about,” he says. “The humanities provide the stories.”</p>
<p><strong>Award for Excellence Dinner&nbsp;</strong><br />
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Stone and Mir earned monetary prizes for their essays and were formally honored at the Award for Excellence Dinner, held by the Foreign Languages and Literatures section on April 24, 2014.&nbsp;In addition to Kemp, this year’s Isabelle de Courtivron Prize Selection Committee members were: Lecturer Susan Carlisle, of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and Senior Lecturer Jane Dunphy, director of English Language Studies.</p>
<p><em>*Note: "Daniel Stone" is a pseudonym being used at the student’s request.</em></p>
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<em>Prepared by MIT SHASS Communications&nbsp;</em><br />
<em>Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
<em>Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill</em></em></h5>
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Awards, honors and fellowships, Diversity, Global, Humanities, Literature, languages and writing, Students, Writing3 Questions with Seth Mnookinhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/3-questions-seth-mnookin
Journalist and best-selling author discusses the challenges and impacts of science writing
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:30:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/3-questions-seth-mnookin<p><em>MIT Assistant Professor of Science Writing Seth Mnookin is the best-selling author of&nbsp;</em>The Panic Virus<em>, which examines how inaccurate scientific reports linking vaccines to autism have reverberated through the media, causing incalculable damage. Fearing&nbsp; vaccines, some parents have exposed their children to the risks of measles, mumps, and rubella, while scarce research dollars pour into disproving the erroneous reports.&nbsp;<br />
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Now the Associate Director of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, Mnookin was recently selected by&nbsp;</em><a href="http://scienceonline.com/" target="_blank"><em>ScienceOnline</em></a><em>&nbsp;to be included in the&nbsp;</em><a href="http://scienceonline.com/2013/12/18/announcing-open-lab-2013-authors/" target="_blank">Open Lab 2013</a>&nbsp;<em>anthology of the best science writing online. He sat down with SHASS Communications recently to share his views on science journalism today.&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong>What unique challenges do science writers face, and how does MIT’s&nbsp;</strong><strong>Graduate Program in Science Writing prepare trustworthy science journalists?</strong><br />
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A major challenge for writers communicating with the public is simply understanding the language of science, which asserts that we can never be 100 percent sure about anything. Scientists say, “With all of the tests that we’ve done, we’re fairly confident that vaccines don’t cause autism.” In science-speak, that means we’re virtually 100 percent confident. In media-speak and public-speak that implies there’s real doubt. That’s why we need science writers — people who really understand the language of science and the language of non-scientists and can translate between the two.<br />
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At MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing (GPSW), we’re giving reporters a year’s worth of instruction on what good science writing looks like. One of the coolest things about the program is how our students are integrated with the MIT community. For instance, we require them to spend 20 hours in the lab with scientists so they understand what it means to do science in a real, tangible way. We also train students in every available medium — they write blogs and a thesis, they do radio and TV segments.&nbsp;<br />
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Our hope is that, eight to 10 students at a time, we can inject good science writing into the nation’s bloodstream. And we’re succeeding. To mention just a few of our accomplished alumni: Lisa Song, SB ’08, SM ’09, recently won a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2013-National-Reporting" target="_blank">Pulitzer Prize</a>;&nbsp;Erico Guizzo, SM ’03, has twice won the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.americanbusinessmedia.com/abm/2012NealAwardsGallery.asp" target="_blank">Neal Award</a>, considered the “Pulitzer Prize for business media;" and a number of additional&nbsp;GPSW&nbsp;alumni have been honored in recent years for extraordinary work in health care reporting and environmental journalism.</p>
<p><strong>Why is good science reporting important to non-scientists, and what can typical readers do to ensure the information they get is accurate?</strong><br />
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We are seeing so many ways in which cutting-edge research is impacting daily lives. Genetic sequencing is a perfect example. It wasn’t that long ago that genetic sequencing seemed like pie-in-the sky, futuristic technology. In 2006, it cost $10 million to sequence a single genome. Today an exome [the subset of the genome made up of DNA segments that code for proteins]&nbsp;can be sequenced for around $1,000. That's incredible. As diagnostic sequencing becomes more widely available, the public needs to understand the limitations of this incredibly powerful technology; otherwise, people will be vulnerable to snake oil salesmen making outlandish promises.&nbsp;<br />
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There are so many sources of information out there, and it’s important to remember they’re not all equally reliable. Just because someone has a slick YouTube channel with good lighting doesn’t mean they’re reputable. I try to remind people that seeing "MD" after a name doesn’t mean that a person is ethical or even intelligent. So, if someone forwards you a link about a medical procedure you’ve never heard of, and it’s never been covered in the mainstream press, you as the consumer have to be skeptical about what’s going on.</p>
<p><strong>Your book&nbsp;</strong><strong><em>The Panic Virus</em></strong><strong>&nbsp;underlined what can happen when science reporting goes wrong. Has the field improved since that story began spreading in the late 1990s? What are the biggest challenges for the field today?</strong><br />
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One issue I have with our colleagues in the media is that they tend to do this reflexive “on the one hand, on the other hand” thing — even in cases, as with vaccines and autism, where there aren’t two hands. In the last 10-15 years, there's been a growing awareness of the fact that merely giving voice to something lends it a kind of legitimacy. When the first specious reports connecting vaccines and autism were published, a lot of news outlets justified their coverage by saying, "We’re not in position to judge.” Today, people for the most part realize that doesn't really cut it.<br />
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When I did my first book,&nbsp;<em>Hard News</em>, about&nbsp;<em>The</em>&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>, I’d hear a lot of complaints about journalism being unreliable — but it turned out that very few people I talked to were subscribing to newspapers or news magazines. If you care about quality journalism, you need to vote with your wallet. There have been enormous cutbacks in dedicated science reporting, and one reason is because news organizations aren’t convinced that’s what readers care about or are willing to pay for.<br />
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We’re lucky in Boston in that we have a fantastic science reporter at the&nbsp;<em>Boston Globe&nbsp;</em>— Carolyn Johnson, a graduate of an early class of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. Also,&nbsp;<em>The New York Times</em>&nbsp;has a dedicated science section, with phenomenal reporters<em>.&nbsp;</em>So there are plenty of places that do not hype shoddy studies or oversell inconclusive results, and the more those places are supported the more they’ll be able to do the type of responsible science reporting that is so important." &nbsp;<br />
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<p><strong>Seth Mnookin's books</strong><br />
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Mnookin’s most recent book,&nbsp;<a href="http://sethmnookin.com/the-panic-virus/" target="_blank"><em>The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear</em></a>, explores the controversies over vaccines and their rumored connection to developmental disorders. The&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>-bestseller&nbsp;<em><a href="http://sethmnookin.com/feeding-the-monster/" target="_blank">Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top</a>&nbsp;</em>chronicles the the John Henry-Tom Werner ownership group of the Boston Red Sox.&nbsp;<a href="http://sethmnookin.com/hard-news/" target="_blank"><em>Hard News: The Scandals at&nbsp;</em></a><a href="http://sethmnookin.com/hard-news/"><em>The New York Times&nbsp;and Their Meaning for American Media</em></a>, was a&nbsp;<em>Washington Post</em>&nbsp;Best Book of the Year.</p>
<p><span style="line-height:1.6em">_________________________________________________________________________</span></p>
<h5><em>Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications</em><br />
<em style="line-height:1.6em">Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand</em><br />
<em style="line-height:1.6em">Senior Writer: Kathryn O’Neill</em></h5>
Seth MnookinBooks and authors, Faculty, Humanities, Science writing, Journalism, 3 QuestionsLe Morte d&#039;Arthur and the engineerhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/le-morte-darthur-and-the-engineer
Laura Meeker &#039;14 designed a game combining engineering and literature to convey the essence of Malory&#039;s &quot;Le Morte d&#039;Arthur.&quot;Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:30:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/le-morte-darthur-and-the-engineer<p><strong>How the literary scholar proposed a maker-culture project</strong></p>
<p>In the fall of 2013, after having taught 21L.460 (Medieval Literature: Legends of Arthur) at MIT for six years, Arthur Bahr took a leap of faith. Instead of a final paper, he gave his students the option to turn in a creative project about Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur.”</p>
<p>“These are MIT students," says Bahr, an associate professor of literature. "They’re makers. ‘Mens et manus,’ right?”</p>
<p>About half of the students took him up on the option, which required them to create something related to visualizing time and space, a challenge for both readers of and characters in the book. Bahr received decorative maps, elaborate charts, a storyboard for a television pilot, and in the case of Laura Meeker '14, who recently graduated, a board game. Creating the game challenged Meeker as a student of literature and also as an engineer.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.6em;">How the student came to put laser to wood, and what craft she achieved</strong></p>
<p>Meeker, who majored in mechanical engineering and literature, had decided to start taking literature classes as a junior because she missed reading. It turned out that she enjoyed these classes so much, she just kept adding more. By the fall of her senior year, she had already written many papers, so when Bahr provided the option to do something different, she took it.</p>
<p>The idea to create a game didn’t come right away, but Meeker knew she wanted to combine engineering and literature somehow. “I was thinking of things I could actually build and decided I could make a cool board for a game,” she says.</p>
<p>She designed the board on a CAD (computer-aided design) system. Using a laser cutter, she etched a slab of wood with a grid of positions, like a chessboard, but cut crosswise by a river on one side and sporting a 3-D scalable castle on the other. She fashioned playing pieces out of cards on stands, each an armored knight with a distinctive shield. “At one point I wanted to build jousting robots, but that was getting too much into engineering and too far from the text,” Meeker says.</p>
<p>While making the physical game involved skill and many late nights in the lab, the real design work — and the real mastery of the literature — is evident in the rules. Somewhat counterintuitively, the rules state: “There are no real winners. One may loosely consider the winner to be the player who reaches the end of round five first.” To complete round five, players must make their way back to whatever square they started on. In a sense, the game ends with the same sentiment as the book. “It’s really sad,” Meeker says. “Everyone sort of just sputters to a stop.”</p>
<p>According to Bahr, this rule gets at the essence of the story. “The grand ideals of Arthur crumble under their own weight,” he says. “A Malory ‘Morte d’Arthur’ game that somebody wins would be untrue to the text because ultimately, there are no winners. It’s about the journey, and everyone loses something precious."</p>
<p><strong>Of the aventure that the student had, and how she read and read</strong></p>
<p>To advance through the game’s rounds, each of which corresponds to a chunk of Malory’s narrative, players pursue a series of “aventures” (the medieval term for “adventure”) that are inspired by key moments in the text. These quests involve jousting; acquiring horses for river crossings; ascending castle walls; and sometimes leaping from them.</p>
<p>Each player takes on an identity defined by an essential characteristic of one of the characters in the book. For instance, the player holding the Seductress identity card, modeled after the characters Guinevere and Isoud, holds the power to “stall the aventure” of another player for a few rounds.</p>
<p>To move, players roll dice — one, two, or three, depending on the player’s identity and the current round. For example, the player holding the identity resembling that of Launcelot, who has a propensity for adulterous love, gets a bonus in the round that focuses on erotic affairs but is penalized in the more chaste round involving the quest for the Holy Grail.</p>
<p>Working out the rules took time and a lot of re-reading. “I kept finding flaws in my ideas and needed to make changes,” says Meeker. "But it was fun — and I wanted the game to work!" Her hard work paid off: Bahr plans to use the game in future iterations of the class, which means that Meeker's creativity and craftsmanship — mens et manus — will be be part of Literature at MIT for years to come.</p>
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<h5 class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS and MIT School of Engineering Communications<br />
Communication Director, SOE: Chad Galts<br />
Communications Director, SHASS: Emily Hiestand<br />
Writer: Elizabeth Dougherty</h5>
Mechanical engineering, Game design, Faculty, Literature, languages and writing, Humanities, StudentsArtist Olafur Eliasson brings Little Sun to MIThttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/artist-olafur-eliasson-brings-little-sun-to-mit
Art and social entrepreneurship project engages MIT’s energy community.Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:00:00 -0400Anya Venturahttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/artist-olafur-eliasson-brings-little-sun-to-mit<p>“The ephemeral light from Berlin traveled with me on the plane and came to Boston,” announced the artist Olafur Eliasson in his recent sold-out lecture at MIT, a sunflower-shaped solar lamp in hand. As the recipient of the <a href="http://arts.mit.edu/mcdermott/">40th Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts</a>, the Danish-Icelandic artist was on campus recently to accept the award and meet with faculty and students across the Institute about his latest art project and venture in social entrepreneurship, <a href="http://www.littlesun.com">Little Sun</a>, a solar-powered lamp that aims to deliver sustainable energy to the 1.6 billion people without access to electricity.</p>
<p>With the cross-school MIT Energy Initiative (MITei), vast range of faculty expertise, and rich culture of innovation, Little Sun could not have landed in a more receptive place.</p>
<p>And yet, for Eliasson, Little Sun is more than just another utilitarian device designed to solve the world’s problems; it is also a way for people to feel more empowered and connected to one another. The lamp is a materialization of one of the most abstract concepts — energy — which can be passed around and shared among people across the globe. The lamp, capturing and storing precious rays of sunlight, provides what Eliasson calls “the right to power" — a way of “holding hands with the sun,” he likes to say.</p>
<p>In summer 2012, Eliasson launched Little Sun alongside engineer Frederik Ottesen, who had previously experimented with building a solar-powered airplane (“I tend to have a passion for the slightly impossible,” Ottesen admitts). For Ottesen, working with an artist like Eliasson brought an indispensable perspective. “[Before Little Sun] I had not learned how to put any kind of emotion into a piece of plastic,” Ottesen says, adding, "There was no product on the marketplace that inspired happiness.” Together, the pair created a product designed not only to provide light, but also evoke desire, inspiration, and self-confidence.</p>
<p>With its bright butter-yellow color, Little Sun is designed to appeal to mothers and children, as a solar alternative to the kerosene lanterns used in many countries. For the price of two to three months’ worth of kerosene, this rechargeable solar lamp can provide a family with ten times brighter light for years, without the serious health and environmental impacts of burning kerosene. Slowly, Eliasson says, Little Sun is transforming the way we use and distribute energy, one lamp at a time. “If I'm a child who reads my bedtime stories from this light, maybe I will be more likely to build a sustainable house,” Eliasson says.</p>
<p>Little Sun first came to MIT last fall, when CEO Felix Tristan Hallwachs, the former manager of Eliasson’s robust 90-person studio, came to present the project and mentor students in the annual Hacking Arts competition in September. The hack-a-thon resulted in the formation of three groups who “hacked” Little Sun to create novel new products, which they then showcased at the MIT Museum’s popular Energy Night in October.</p>
<p>Once Eliasson himself arrived on campus, he had the opportunity to further discuss issues of sustainable development, community engagement, design, product engineering, and social entrepreneurship in developing economies. He met with the MIT D-­Lab, TATA Fellows, the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Center for Civic Media, Open Documentary Lab, the MIT Museum, and students in the Art, Culture, and Technology program, and the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program. Activities ranged from one-on-one meetings, lectures, brainstorm sessions, and creative workshops.</p>
<p>Eliasson’s interest in “turning thinking into doing” is a perfect fit with MIT’s motto of mens et manus, or mind and hand. Eliasson’s multidisciplinary residency engaged groups across the Institute to creatively expand the conversation around sustainable energy, as well as collectively imagine new and inventive solutions for the future. “It’s an unbelievable moment when you can give an idea shape,” he says.</p>
<p>In many ways, Little Sun is a natural extension of the philosophical ideas that have occupied Eliasson throughout the course of this 12-year career. Many of his works explore the perception of light as it relates to time, space, and movement. As the scholar Marcella Beccaria wrote, “Light is the instrument through which Eliasson relates to each person as a sensuous subject who lives in the realm of daily life.” Through such works, he explores the points at which inner experience intersects with the external world.</p>
<p>Eliasson’s experiments with natural phenomena were on display in his enormously popular installation, The weather project, which debuted at London’s Tate Modern in 2003. For this work, Eliasson installed an immense artificial sun in the Tate’s cavernous Turbine Hall, creating a sui generis immersive environment of ethereal light and fog. The weather, Eliasson suggests, is a way of experiencing both singularity and plurality at once — one of his key conceptual preoccupations. In a similar way, Little Sun straddles the boundary between the individual and the collective, offering users an individual sense of personal power — both literally and figuratively — while also connecting them to others in a global energy system.</p>
<p>Eliasson is interested in collapsing distances — between self and other, between near and far — to emphasize the importance of interdependence. Little Sun, Eliasson says, is “about looking at the planet as one kind of ecosystem.”</p>
Olafur EliassonArts, Humanities, Special events and guest speakers, Energy, EntrepreneurshipOpen Documentary Lab puts MIT in the vanguard of new media storytellinghttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/open-documentary-lab-puts-mit-in-the-vanguard-of-new-media-storytelling
Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:00:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/open-documentary-lab-puts-mit-in-the-vanguard-of-new-media-storytelling<p>Internet, cellphone cameras, big data, interactive games, and other technologies have created an explosion of new storytelling methods that is transforming the media landscape. The Open Documentary Lab (OpenDocLab), located in MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, explores the challenges and opportunities these changes present for the makers of today’s documentaries.</p>
<p>“We’re at a great moment of change, similar to when early cinema appeared on the scene,” OpenDocLab Director Sarah Wolozin says. “Media are changing dramatically, so people want to know how to keep up.”</p>
<p><b>MIT's leadership in new media</b></p>
<p>Founded in 2012 as a research initiative within the Comparative Media Studies/Writing section, OpenDocLab builds on MIT’s impressive legacy of media innovation — from Technicolor to one of the world's first video games, "Spacewar." MIT’s accomplishments in film include pioneering work in Direct Cinema by Ed Pincus and Richard Leacock, who tapped the new availability of portable sync-sound cameras for documentary work in the 1960s and ’70s, and early explorations in interactive cinema by Glorianna Davenport, who used digital technology to involve audiences in narration in the 1980s and ’90s.</p>
<p>“MIT has a long history in the area of new media. It just made sense to take the next step,” says Professor William Uricchio, principal investigator of the OpenDocLab. Indeed, the lab’s first project was a visual whitepaper, <a href="http://bit.ly/1kj7xpA" target="_blank" title="Moments of Innovation">Moments of Innovation</a>, which outlines the long human search for a more immersive story experience and highlights the themes that continue to drive modern documentary makers — including participation, data visualization, and sense of place.</p>
<p>The OpenDocLab again puts MIT in the vanguard. “MIT is uniquely qualified to lead this endeavor because of the level of expertise here in areas that storytellers are now incorporating — new technologies, civic media, games — and the deep understanding, developed in our Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W) program, of how people use media," Wolozin says.</p>
<p><b>Interventionist research</b></p>
<p>The lab’s official launch in March 2012, during the New Arts of Documentary summit, highlighted the goal of the new initiative: to bring documentary scholars, media makers, technologists, and curators together to investigate leading-edge developments in authorship, textual form, technology, and interactivity.<br />
Since then, the lab has pursued what Wolozin calls “interventionist research,” collaborating with community groups and top film institutions such as the Sundance Institute, the Tribeca Film Institute, the National Film Board of Canada to tell documentary stories and to identify opportunities for social impact.</p>
<p>“People are pushing the boundaries of what documentary can be,” Wolozin says. "One of our goals is to help people recognize what they can do with a nonfiction idea.”</p>
<p><b>Featured projects </b></p>
<p>"<a href="http://bit.ly/1cKvgwI" target="_blank" title="Highrise"><b>Highrise</b></a>" by Katarina Cizek.</p>
<p>An Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and member of the National Film Board of Canada, MIT visiting artist Katarina Cizek asked people all over the world to document their experiences for her work, which centers on the often-marginalized high-rise dwellings common to major cities. The project includes linear films, a story world (or fictional universe) that users can explore, and a number of clickable add-ons that enable viewers to learn more about high-rise living throughout history.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://bit.ly/1cKvkN4" target="_blank" title="Hollow"><b>Hollow</b></a>" by Elaine McMillion.</p>
<p>An interactive documentary that combines video portraits, data visualizations, photography, and soundscapes with community-generated content, Elaine McMillion’s “Hollow” portrays life in a rural county of West Virginia decimated by the decline of the coal-mining industry. This work includes an interactive map of the county and has a continuing presence online as residents can update their stories at will.</p>
<p>"<a href="http://bit.ly/1g2pNfi" target="_blank" title="Robots in Residence"><b>Robots in Residence</b></a>" by Alexander Reben.</p>
<p>A creation of lab research affiliate and MIT Media Lab alumnus Alexander Reben, “Robots in Residence” provides an unedited view of what people say when a little robot rolls up and starts talking to them. Reben’s robots looked like cardboard sandwich boxes with smiley faces but were equipped with sensors and high-resolution video cameras. Set to roam autonomously, they recorded answers to questions such as “Tell me something you have never told a stranger before.” Answers included: “I have been to the dentist just once in my life” and “I think boys with British accents are cute.”</p>
<p><b>New voices supported by new technologies </b></p>
<p>New documentary techniques and technologies run the gamut from 360-degree video, which enables viewers to explore a scene from every angle, to location-based film, which provides video clips to cellphones based on GPS coordinates. To stay ahead in this fast-moving field, the OpenDocLab developed <a href="http://docubase.mit.edu/" target="_blank" title="Docubase">docubase</a>, a curated online archive of interactive documentary projects. Currently in beta testing, docubase enables users to explore a rich selection of modern documentaries in a variety of ways — such as by theme, technology, or director.</p>
<p>“The ubiquity and connectivity of today's media technologies enable new voices to be heard,” Wolozin says. “We want to put professional storytellers together with communities because there is great potential for audiences and the subjects of the documentaries to have an active role.”</p>
<p><b>Research mission </b></p>
<p>Naturally, pedagogy is a key mission for the lab, which hosts a weekly research meeting for faculty and students as well a public speaker series to disseminate developments in the field. In addition, the lab posts a full range of relevant <a href="http://bit.ly/1cPPCPz" target="_blank" title="Documentary Courses at MIT">course listings on its website</a> — several of which are taught by <a href="http://opendoclab.mit.edu/category/affiliated-faculty-and-research-staff" target="_blank" title="Affiliated Faculty and Research Staff">affiliated faculty members</a>.</p>
<p>The CMS/W labs are a key component of the CMS/W pedagogy. They offer a place for students to try out some of the theories they learn and develop in the classroom. The lab offers them real world experience and professional contacts and a chance to learn new skills such as problem-solving, brainstorming, and collaboration, skills that are necessary for workplace success.</p>
<p>This year, the OpenDocLab also welcomed its first <a href="http://opendoclab.mit.edu/category/2013-2014-fellows" target="_blank" title="Fellows | Open Documentary Lab at MIT">class of fellows</a>, six midcareer professionals from a variety of disciplines — including arts, engineering, and human rights — who have brought their expertise to MIT to learn, collaborate, and share insights on digital documentary storytelling.</p>
<p>“We’re trying to forge ahead, identify new trends in the field, and put technologists in touch with storytellers,” Uricchio says. “It’s like looking at the first five to eight years of television. There’s no orthodoxy as yet. We see documentary as a mission, not a medium. New tools, storytelling techniques, and modes of participation combine to make this a very exciting moment.”</p>
<hr />
<h5 class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</h5>
Detail from "Moments of Immersion," Open Documentary LabArts, Films, Humanities, Journalism, Media, Visual artsIntellectual propertyhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/intellectual-property-0214
Sandy Alexandre explores the complex relationship between black literature and history.Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:00:00 -0500Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/intellectual-property-0214<p>August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Piano Lesson,” set in 1936, revolves around a sibling conflict over a piece of property: Berniece Charles wants to keep an heirloom piano that was first acquired when white slaveholders sold her great-grandfather in the 19th century; now it is owned by her freed family. Her brother Boy Willie, on the other hand, wants to sell the piano and use the money to buy land.<br />
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The conflict is emotionally and ethically fraught: Should the family keep the piano as a reminder of its history and the past? Or sell it, to symbolically move on from that tortured history and turn past wrongs into practical gains?<br />
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For Sandy Alexandre, an associate professor of literature at MIT, the play is an example of the complicated relationship black Americans have with material possessions — the subject of a new book she is developing. Contrary to stereotypes about blacks prizing flashy, dispensable goods, Alexandre says, African-American literature is filled with complex psychological and historical meditations about what it means to own property in a country where blacks themselves were once property.<br />
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“I think literature tends to short-circuit that language of crass accumulation that we often find unfairly imputed to black people and their relationship to material possessions in popular culture,” Alexandre says.<br />
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It is also a case, Alexandre suggests, where literature reveals larger truths about life and produces moments of social connection that would otherwise escape us.<br />
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“What I love most about literature is that it facilitates empathy for, and acceptance of, other people,” Alexandre says. “It’s a space of virtual intimacy between human beings that creates the circumstances to enable actual intimacy in the real world. Life is big, messy, and sprawling. But a literary narrative organizes life and makes meaning out of it. There is something precious in that — in being able to hold the value of such meaning in your hand and eventually in your mind.”<br />
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Alexandre’s specialty is historically grounded literary scholarship that digs into America’s turbulent past. Her first book, “The Properties of Violence” (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), examined black American literary depictions of nature, property ownership, and dispossession alongside their relationship to lynching in the United States. For such scholarship, Alexandre received tenure this year at MIT — where she delights in teaching and connecting with students, as well.&nbsp;<br />
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“As a teacher, especially in the context of MIT, one has to be ready to answer the question of what’s at stake in literature,” Alexandre says. “To have an answer for students, to feel like you have gotten through to them and had an impact, is very satisfying — and also a nice reminder to myself that the strong belief that your subject matters helps to enchant the teaching.”<br />
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<strong>School and more school</strong><br />
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Alexandre says she never imagined becoming a scholar until she had nearly completed her undergraduate degree, when a supportive professor urged her to consider graduate school. She grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, with parents who had immigrated from Haiti. Her father was an electrician and her parents kept a strict Catholic household, speaking predominantly in Creole.<br />
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“When I was young I did not anticipate that I would ever be a literature professor,” Alexandre says. She did, however, spend a lot of her time absorbed in books — from the Bible to “Gulliver’s Travels” and James Herriot’s stories about animals and their owners. “I did a lot of reading as a way of retreating into another world, as well as my own, mostly because I was, and still am, pretty introverted,” Alexandre explains.<br />
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After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, Alexandre was accepted at Dartmouth College, which she attended at the urging of a guidance counselor. “I needed to be in a place that would discipline my attention, and Dartmouth was that place; it was a great education,” Alexandre says.<br />
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Near the end of her undergraduate years, a literature professor strongly suggested that she consider applying to graduate school. After taking a year off to work and study for her GREs, Alexandre enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Virginia, to the surprise of her parents, who were hoping she would become a doctor or a lawyer.<br />
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“When I told my mother I was going to graduate school, her response was, ‘Didn’t you just graduate?’” Alexandre recalls with a laugh. Still, at that point she knew she preferred to pursue a career that would allow her “to acquire skills that made me passionate about teaching, and about conceptual problems that deal with literature and culture.”<br />
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<strong>Created in history</strong><br />
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At Virginia, Alexandre developed her dissertation, which became her first book, after deciding to write about blacks and nature generally. As she soon realized, the history of lynching kept influencing the texts she was studying.<br />
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“What the history kept telling me is there is something about the violence inflicted on black Americans, and popular images of dead black bodies in trees, that impinges on that relationship between representations of blacks and nature,” Alexandre says. Moreover, she adds, the study of literature often requires thinking in historical terms.<br />
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“These cultural works are not created in a vacuum,” she says. “They’re created in history, in time, so they are necessarily in conversation with that history.”<br />
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Circling back to her current book project, Alexandre cites Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man” as another classic in which material possessions convey a weighty sense of history. In the book, the main character comes into possession of, among other things, a chain link from a friend who spent years on a chain gang.<br />
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“There’s something about these objects that the ‘invisible man’ encounters that allows him to feel, despite his many doubts, like he does indeed exist in the world, that he does matter, in both senses of the term,” Alexandre says. Those possessions, again grounded in a fraught history, “are helping to ground the protagonist as well, helping him feel like he is present in the here and now, and giving him a sense of possibility for the future. We learn something about the way objects can be germane to a healthy and stable sense of identity.”</p>
Sandy AlexandreLiterature, languages and writing, Education, teaching, academics, English, Faculty, Humanities, ProfileElevating the discoursehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/elevating-the-discourse
Meet the Knight Science Journalism FellowsMon, 10 Feb 2014 16:30:00 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/elevating-the-discourse<strong>A formidable practice</strong><br /><br />Science journalism is the central way many of us learn how advances in science and technology are affecting and changing our lives — in everything from daily choices about food or health care, to issues that impact the planet as a whole.<br /><br />But crafting great science journalism is a formidable challenge. Science journalists must be schooled deeply in complex scientific and technological practices, theories, and information. They must have superb skills in writing, video, and other media that can convey the facts, import, and implications of new discoveries and data. They must be ace reporters, bringing critical thinking and hard questions to their investigations. They must have command of language that is both nuanced enough to do justice to intricate ideas, and clear and compelling enough to engage a broad public audience.<br /><br />For the past 30 years, the Knight Science Journalism (KSJ) program at MIT, has been helping talented science journalists meet that challenge.<br /><br /><strong>A world leader</strong><br /><br />Now the leading fellowship program in the world for science and technology journalists, the MIT Knights program admits 12 to 15 seasoned journalists each year to spend two terms at MIT honing their science reporting skills, while working alongside scientists and researchers.<br /><br />The selected journalists come from all over the globe, and as alumni, form an ever-growing community of international colleagues. This year the KSJ program welcomed 11 journalists from six countries, who cover a range of scientific fields, including climate change, medicine, human health, and quantum mechanics.<br /><br />SHASS Communications recently spoke with the current Knight Fellows, to hear their perspectives on their fellowship year at MIT, and their views about the purposes and rewards of their field. (Click on the Knight Fellows' name to read their interviews.)<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/arevalom" target="_blank"><strong>Catalina Arévalo</strong></a>, environment correspondent, EFE News Agency<br />"If journalists don’t understand the science of climate change how can they effectively inform the public about the issues?"<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/bajaka" target="_blank"><strong>Aleszu Bajak</strong></a>, freelance science writer<br />"With the resources at MIT and Harvard, we’re growing our knowledge base and contact lists to hopefully change the conversation about some of the most salient scientific issues of our time."<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/belluzj" target="_blank"><strong>Julia Belluz</strong></a>, writer and senior editor, <i>Maclean's</i>, <i>Medical Post</i><br />"Good science journalism involves engaging critically with science and putting it into context. We should report on science with the same thoroughness and skepticism we would apply to anything else."<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/clarkn" target="_blank"><strong>Nick Clark</strong></a>, anchor and correspondent Al Jazeera English<br />"The field of journalism plays a crucial role in helping the public understand science. To get it right, journalists need to get the science right, and then make it comprehensible to the lay public."<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/harrism" target="_blank"><strong>Mark Harris</strong></a>, freelance science and technology journalist<br />"Examining history through a lens of technology not only helps us understand how the world we live in came to be, it can also lend a perspective on how to tackle similar issues of trade, power, and intellectual property today."<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/mapesl" target="_blank"><strong>Lynda Mapes</strong></a>, <i>Seattle Times</i><br />"Our job is to go out in the field, into the laboratories, and into the libraries to tell stories with plain language so people will engage and come back for more."<br /><br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/palmerj" target="_blank"><strong>Jason Palmer</strong></a>, science and technology reporter, BBC News<br />"As a former scientist — one who would have loved to be at MIT as a student years ago — there’s simply no better academic destination than MIT, and no better fellowship focused on the particular craft of science journalism."<br /><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/sahulaj"><br /></a><strong><a href="http://shass.mit.edu/community/sahulaj"><strong>Jonathan Sahula</strong></a>, </strong>freelance producer, cameraman, editor, and animator<br />"The Knight Fellows share a sense that MIT is offering us a unique opportunity to interact with scientists and researchers as they do their work."<br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Writer, Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>Science writing, Humanities, Knight fellowship, Journalism, Science journalismSA+P receives $1 million grant from Mellon Foundationhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/sap-receives-1m-grant-from-mellon-foundation
The grant will help create a Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative.Mon, 13 Jan 2014 15:30:00 -0500Scott R Campbellhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/sap-receives-1m-grant-from-mellon-foundationThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded MIT's School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P) a $1 million grant to help create a Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative.<br /><br />Aimed at expanding the consciousness and reach of global history in teaching architecture, the Collaborative includes scholars who, in various ways, will produce classroom materials for teachers and professors in charge of teaching architectural history at the undergraduate or survey level.<br /><br />This effort does not preclude more advanced level education, but the main purpose of the Collaborative is to transform the discipline "from below" – meaning to help shape the discourse of architectural history by reshaping its teaching at the survey level.<br /><br />While survey courses in architectural history, as well as in art history and world history, are usually organized by national-based or style-based categories — such as Italian, French, Chinese, and The Renaissance — the Collaborative will emphasize transnational and transgeographical perspectives.<br /><br />The Collaborative will hold annual teaching conferences and award grants over a three-year period to groups of faculty to create user-friendly teaching materials using global-history frameworks. The material will be made available to teachers and professors worldwide free of cost through a website.<br /><br />SA+P’s Mark Jarzombek, associate dean and professor, and Vikramaditya Prakāsh of the University of Washington are co-principal investigators. The Board is composed of Jarzombek, Prakāsh, Gail Fenske (Roger Williams University), Adnan Morshed (Catholic University of America), Robert Cowherd (Wentworth Institute of Technology), and Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University).<br /><br />The grant in support of the new MIT program is one of 13 made so far to major institutions of higher education and research. As part of its mission to advance meaningful work in the humanities and the arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2012 launched an initiative, "Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities," to support scholarship and higher education at the intersection of architecture and the humanities. The initiative emphasizes the joint contributions that the humanities and the design and planning disciplines may make to the understanding of the processes and effects of burgeoning urbanization.Awards, honors and fellowships, Architecture, Humanities, HistorySymposium marks 50th anniversary of ‘The Machine in the Garden’http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/symposium-honors-50th-anniversary-of-qthe-machine-in-the-gardenq
Enduringly influential book by Leo Marx, MIT professor emeritusFri, 13 Dec 2013 05:00:01 -0500School of Humanities, Arts and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/symposium-honors-50th-anniversary-of-qthe-machine-in-the-gardenqMIT Professor Emeritus Leo Marx wrote “The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America” in 1964, before cell phones, the Internet, and computers became omnipresent in American life. Yet today this work — centered on the tensions 19th-century authors saw as shaping American life — remains as relevant as ever.<br /><br />On Nov. 8, Marx’s colleagues and former students gathered to celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary in an afternoon symposium at MIT. Speakers recounted the legacy of this seminal work in American studies and of the teacher and scholar who penned it.<br /><br />Through it all, the guest of honor, Marx himself, now 94, sat quietly in the front row. Afterward, Marx called the event “most unusual and terribly moving.”<br /><br /><strong>Two visions that shaped America </strong><br /><br />“The book is about cultural ambivalences towards the encroaching of science and technology in everyday life," said David Kaiser, Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science. "Marx was writing about railroads and telegraphy, and the larger notion is that technology allows great things — it knit the nation together — but it also seemed to tear down what had been safe spaces of the pastoral."<br /><br />“The Machine in the Garden” examines the differences between the "pastoral" and "progressive" ideals that characterized early-19th-century American culture and that have evolved into the basis for current environmental debates.<br /><br />“The power of Marx’s analysis and prose makes it still worth reading today,” added Kaiser, who is also head of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), which hosted the symposium jointly with the Marx family and Oxford University Press.<br /><br />Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of MIT’s PhD program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society — which was marked on November 9 with a daylong symposium at MIT — the “Machine in the Garden” event drew more than 200 people to Wong Auditorium to reflect on Marx’s influence, both on his field and on the lives of his students and colleagues.<br /><br /><strong>Daring, enduring, persuasive </strong><br /><br />After an introduction by Kaiser and a few words by Marx’s son Andrew, the event featured reflections by five key associates, beginning with a representative of the book’s publisher, Oxford University Press.<br /><br />Emphasizing that it is “a remarkable accomplishment” for any book to remain in print continuously for 50 years, Niko Pfund, president and academic publisher of Oxford University Press USA, reminded everyone of what was happening the year “The Machine in the Garden” was first published: Barry Goldwater was running for president, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, and Elizabeth Taylor had just married Richard Burton (for the first time). <br /><br />“Through it all, ‘Machine in the Garden’ has consistently been a book people thought was important to read, one that makes sense of our relationship to history and technology,” Pfund said. “The book has gone through dozens of printings and sold hundreds of thousands of copies — an impressive figure by any measure.”<br /><br />Alan Trachtenberg, a former graduate student of Marx’s who is now a professor emeritus of English and American studies at Yale University, stressed the book’s antecedents in the Cold War. He said “The Machine in the Garden” reveals rich crosscurrents among literary, economic, and political spheres, reflecting both Marx’s experience as a veteran of World War II and his socialist politics.<br /><br />“What moved me most of all as an aspiring American studies scholar — and has remained a major bequest of the book — was and still is the book’s daring and movingly persuasive historicism,” Trachtenberg said. “Fifty years later, ‘The Machine in the Garden’ remains a work to live up to.”<br /><br /><strong>A legendary teacher </strong><br /><br />David Nye, professor of American history at the University of Southern Denmark, emphasized that Marx was not only a great writer but a wonderful teacher. Nye studied with Marx as an undergraduate at Amherst College, where Marx taught before coming to MIT in the 1970s to help launch STS.<br /><br />“One reason the book was so accessible is that it had been taught before it was written; it had been honed over time,” Nye said. “There’s an unfortunate pressure now to rush things into print. The link between teaching and research was clear here.”<br /><br />Rebecca Herzig PhD ’98 also lauded Marx’s teaching. A former advisee of Marx’s, Herzig is now a professor of women and gender studies at Bates College. “I am and always will be Leo’s devoted student, striving to be half the teacher and half the mensch he is,” she said.<br /><br />Rosalind Williams, Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, offered her recollections of teaching classes at MIT with Marx. What impressed her the most, she said, was his relentless dedication to the task. No syllabus was ever complete; Marx was always honing his approach to teaching great literature. And, Williams noted, “He is never teaching his book. He’s teaching the books in his book, classics like ‘Walden’ and ‘Moby Dick.’” <br /><br />The afternoon’s formal remarks were followed by a lively comments period, which enabled Marx’s many admirers to offer their own recollections of the man and his work.<br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill<br />Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>Detail, 'The Lackawanna Valley,' by George Inness, 1855Awards, honors and fellowships, Books and authors, Environment, Faculty, Humanities, Technology and societyWi-Phi website presents &#039;philosophy&#039;s greatest hits&#039;http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/wi-phi-website-presents-philosophys-greatest-hits
Open access philosophy site aims to build better mindsMon, 09 Dec 2013 15:44:00 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/wi-phi-website-presents-philosophys-greatest-hits<p>A little philosophy could go a long way toward making the world a better place, according to Damien Rochford PhD ’13, who has launched a philosophy website, Wi-Phi, with a colleague from Yale University.<br />
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“I don’t expect Wi-Phi to change the culture at large, but the more experience people get thinking slowly and clearly about things, the better off we’ll be,” says Rochford, a postdoc associate in MIT’s Office of Digital Learning.<br />
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Wi-Phi introduces the practices of philosophy through videos that are entertaining and accessible to people with no background in the subject. Rochford and Wi-Phi co-founder Gaurav Vazirani explain that the goal of the site is to teach people to “do philosophy,” rather than simply teach them what philosophers have thought, so the site focuses on helping users develop critical thinking skills.<br />
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<strong>Videos on timeless questions </strong><br />
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Rochford and Vazirani, a doctoral candidate at Yale, have put together more than a dozen short video animations to accompany talks by top scholars on such timeless questions as whether humans have free will, whether God exists, and what it means for a sentence to be true.&nbsp;<br />
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Are such questions important in our modern lives? Yes, Rochford says: Philosophical thinking is more important than ever in an era in which we are all bombarded by propaganda designed to persuade us to act on non-rational grounds — for example, to vote for a political candidate because his name is familiar, or to buy a product because a celebrity likes it.<br />
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<strong>What do you think? </strong><br />
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Philosophy teaches skills for discerning when someone is not arguing in good faith, Rochford says. “I see academic philosophers as guardians of a kind of culture that allows rational dialogue to happen. That kind of activity doesn’t happen by itself," he says.<br />
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Wi-Phi’s content is designed to help fill the skills gap for those who never had the chance to study philosophy. “It’s the standard stuff of introductory philosophy — like the greatest hits,” Rochford says.<br />
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Each video examines an argument logically, step by step, to help viewers think through the reasoning themselves. Links are provided to additional readings, and a comments section enables viewers to continue the debate — both with the Wi-Phi producers and with one another.<br />
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“That’s been very exciting, seeing people talking about the ideas,” Rochford says. “Gaurav and I both feel strongly that philosophy has a role in public life.”<br />
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<strong>24.00x, the first online introductory philosophy course </strong><br />
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In addition to producing Wi-Phi, Rochford also worked for several months with Associate Professor of Philosophy Caspar Hare to produce the first massive open online course in introductory philosophy offered by an American university.<br />
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24.00x, Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge, and Consciousness, which launched on Oct. 1, focuses on how to ask and answer philosophical questions and on developing critical reasoning and argumentative skills.<br />
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“The Internet is a great tool, and through online education, humanities subjects such as philosophy can be helpful to people all over the world," Rochford says.<br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>
Faculty, Humanities, Philosophy, StudentsClass on digital humanities premieres with tech-savvy approacheshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/class-on-digital-humanities-premieres-with-tech-savvy-approaches
New class offers MIT students the chance to pair technical know-how with real-world art and humanities projects at local museums.Wed, 04 Dec 2013 14:00:00 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/class-on-digital-humanities-premieres-with-tech-savvy-approaches<p><i>Among the humanities initiatives at MIT are a range of projects in the digital humanities — a field of research, teaching, and creation that brings together humanities disciplines and computational approaches. Methodologies and techniques for digital-humanities projects include web-based media, digital archiving, data mining, geospatial analysis, crowdsourcing, data visualization, and simulation. This story examines how MIT humanities faculty are engaging students with the potentials of digital humanities for research and innovation. </i><br />
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First offered in the spring 2013 term, and taught by Professor James Paradis and Principal Research Associate Kurt Fendt of MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, CMS.633 (Digital Humanities: Topics, Techniques, and Technologies) gave MIT students the chance to pair technical know-how with real-world humanities projects for such clients as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA) and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.<br />
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Students were introduced to key digital humanities concepts, including data representation, digital archives, user interaction, and information visualization, and given opportunities to apply these to a variety of challenges. In addition to devising solutions for the two Boston museums, students also took on the MIT-based Comédie-Française Registers Project and the Edgerton Digital Collections, grappling, in both cases, with a common digital-humanities problem: how to make use of vast amounts of data.<br />
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“Digital humanities is a fresh approach," Paradis says. "It's thinking about how new forms of representation can be used to solve problems. It’s applied humanities.”<br />
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<strong>Putting ideas into action </strong><br />
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Because this class took place at MIT, where many students are adept at computer programming, participants were able not only to conceptualize the tools that might prove useful to their clients, but also to build them.<br />
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“Many other schools who are prominent in the digital humanities offer more traditional humanities courses than we do,” Fendt says. “They simply don’t have students with the building experience that MIT students have.”<br />
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MIT student teams immediately put their ideas into action: Those working for the Comédie Française Registers Project and the Edgerton Digital Collections developed tools to help scholars mine rich new sources of data; those working for the museums found new ways to use technology to enhance the visitor experience. “Students could really examine real-world problems and experience what these institutions are dealing with,” Fendt says.<br />
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<strong>Information tools for museum visitors </strong><br />
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For the ICA, the challenge was to make better use of the museum’s large lobby. Students responded by designing “the i SEE a Portal,” which employs a graphical user interface and a Python game module to engage visitors in a touchscreen display intended to be installed in the lobby. “It’s dynamically rearrangeable, so it’s a playful, interactive service,” says Dmitri Megretski ’13, an electrical engineering and computer science major.<br />
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For the Gardner, students were challenged to design media for the hallways connecting the museum's original building — which has a no-mobile policy — to the Gardner's new wing, a space that welcomes new technologies and interactions. Students developed a digital guestbook that doubled as an interactive artwork. Employing data visualization techniques they had learned in class, students proposed different ways to display visitors’ tweets about the museum. In one, the letters of each message appeared to fly off the page, changing in real time as new messages came in. In another, the tweets appeared as a succession of word clouds. “People want to see what they wrote, see their mark,” says Birkan Uzun ’15, an electrical engineering and computer science major.<br />
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<strong>Tools for asking new questions</strong><br />
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Visualizing data was also a central concern for students working on the Edgerton Digital Collections, an effort to provide the first online access to the research notebooks of MIT pioneer Harold “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990). To enable scholars to glean information quickly, the students developed a timeline spotlighting Edgerton’s interactions as referenced in the original source materials. “You can see what kind of experiments Doc Edgerton was working on and who he was working with,” says Chau Vu ’14, a biology major, noting that the tool also allows users to click through to view the original notebook pages.<br />
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Facilitating historical research was likewise the focus of the Comédie-Française team, which developed a visual search engine to assist the ongoing effort to make the complete registers of the Comédie-Française theater troupe (1680-1800) accessible online. The tool makes it possible to search the theater’s extensive records (which until 2007 could only be seen in Paris), filter results by such categories as date, genre, title, and playwright, and represent them through dynamic visualizations.<br />
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Like many projects in the digital humanities, this one allows scholars to ask new questions about the material, Fendt says. “The Comédie-Française usually performed two plays a night, a comedy and a tragedy. So, one question is, how did they decide on those pairings? Such questions cannot be easily answered by poring over handwritten documents one by one, but tools like this can help us gain new insights."<br />
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All of these exploratory projects demonstrate the breadth of projects being undertaken by those involved in digital humanities. Both Fendt and Paradis say they look forward to seeing what direction the class will take next term, when a new set of students will address fresh challenges.<br />
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“This was our first run — and we have big hopes for this course,” Paradis says.</p>
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill<br />
Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>
The ICA is the location for an MIT student digital humanities prototype project.Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Faculty, Humanities, Student life, Students, Digital humanitiesMIT economist&#039;s &#039;hard math&#039; books inspire young studentshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/mit-economists-hard-math-books-inspire-young-students
Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:30:00 -0500School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/mit-economists-hard-math-books-inspire-young-studentsSix years ago when Glenn Ellison volunteered to coach his daughter Caroline's middle-school math team, he hardly realized he would soon become a leading authority in the niche market of advanced mathematics textbooks for elementary- and middle-school students.<br /><br />After coaching Caroline's team for two years, Ellison, Gregory K. Palm (1970) Professor of Economics, decided to compile the notes, worksheets, and packets he had created into <i>Hard Math for Middle School: IMLEM Edition</i> (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2008) to make the information more easily accessible to kids not on his team.<br /><br />Although Ellison had intended the book for a small local audience — the middle-school students who participated in the Intermediate Math League of Eastern Massachusetts (IMLEM) — the book took off nationally, selling thousands of copies across the country. <br /><br />The enthusiastic response to <i>Hard Math for Middle School</i> made apparent the absence of excellent textbooks for above-average math students. This revelation — in addition to the frequent requests from his youngest daughter, Kate — spurred Ellison to create a follow-up textbook designed for an even younger audience. <br /><br /><br /><strong>Raising the bar</strong><br /><br />Earlier this year, Ellison released his second book, <i>Hard Math for Elementary School</i> (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013), geared to challenge third- to sixth-grade students who are capable of working above grade-level math. Ellison hopes his latest book will arm elementary school kids with solid fundamental math skills, as well as curiosity, and an enduring passion for mathematics.<br /><br />He explains that young, high-achieving students can become complacent or even apathetic in their math classes because the material isn't difficult enough to sustain their interest. To keep such students occupied during class, teachers will often give them the next grade-level textbook; but in many cases even the next-level material is not challenging enough, and these most advanced students simply lose interest in math. <br /><br />That's where <i>Hard Math for Elementary School</i> comes in. Presenting above-average students math problems that are more difficult and more widely ranging than standard texts, the book has proven exciting to gifted young students. <br /><br />"Math is really intriguing," says Ellison, "and it's critical for kids to learn math well while they're still young. High school students are harder to reach than third graders, but you can make an impact on elementary school kids by showing them that math is not only interesting, but also pretty cool."<br /><br /><strong>Challenging with a side of fun</strong><br /> <br />Ellison composed <i>Hard Math for Elementary School</i> to be used as an enrichment textbook to supplement classroom lessons. The problems covered in the text are broad and deep in scope, and introduce topics now commonly omitted from elementary school curricula, such as prime numbers, counting, and probability.<br /><br />The chapters are structured so the first few pages are relatively easy, followed by pages that gradually increase in difficulty, an approach enables kids to gain confidence. <br /><br />Although Ellison alerts his readers in the introduction that some of the problems are extremely difficult to answer (even for adults), he finds that does not deter high achievers from using the book. Rather, the challenges enthrall such students, who often equate "difficult" with "fun," and feel a great sense of accomplishment when they can solve an especially complex math problem.<br /><br />Parents who use the book with their children substantiate Ellison's theory. "I love that Glenn does not talk down to students," said Lakshmi Iyer, who uses the book with her second-grade daughter. "He makes it clear early on that this book will be challenging — but most importantly, he presents math as something powerful, beautiful, and fun. I love that he is encouraging kids to reach high. My daughter feels a strong sense of achievement when she manages to get a problem right in his 'hard math' book."<br /><br /><strong>A great resource for students of all ages</strong><br /><br />Others who have used Ellison's textbook laud him for creating unparalleled supplemental math textbooks.<br /><br />"I loved the way the book was written — Glenn knows very well how to make difficult material engaging and interesting," said Dina Mayzlin SB '97, PhD '02, who used a pre-publication copy of <i>Hard Math for Elementary School</i> to teach her son's Math Challenge club. "It's an excellent resource with few (if any) alternatives. I am so grateful that Glenn has devoted the time and effort to write this book. His books will have a lot of impact on young kids."<br /><br />Ying Gao, a senior at Newton North High School, used Ellison's book <i>Hard Math for Middle School</i>throughout middle school to prepare for the IMLEM and MATHCOUNTS. However, she still references the book and its more advanced topics for her current coursework. And now her nine-year-old brother Steven has begun using Ellison's newest book. He describes the book as "fun" and especially enjoys the jokes Ellison interspersed throughout the lessons.<br /><br /> <strong>Inspiring the next generation</strong><br /><br />Ellison hopes his books ignite more interest in math among younger students. For now, he can appreciate the impact his books are making whenever he attends his daughter's math competitions, where he has attained quasi-celebrity status. Here Ellison encounters numerous kids carrying his middle school math book—an occurrence he describes as "very cool."<br /><br />"I do get kids who come up to me to tell me how much they like the book, or ask if I can autograph their book," said Ellison. "What would be great is if in 10 to 12 years my MIT students come up to me and say I used your book when I was in fifth grade. That would be really awesome." <br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Writer, Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski<br />Images, details from <i>Hard Math</i> covers</p>Books and authors, Economics, Education, teaching, academics, Humanities, K-12 education, Mathematics, Social sciencesA new path for growthhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/hierarchical-capitalism-in-latin-america-1112
In a new book, MIT political scientist Ben Ross Schneider sets out an agenda for growth with greater equality in Latin America.Tue, 12 Nov 2013 05:00:00 -0500Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/hierarchical-capitalism-in-latin-america-1112The last three decades have represented a time of tectonic change in much of Latin America: Many authoritarian governments have been replaced by democracies, and free-market principles have supplanted many of the command economies of the past. Overall, these “shifts in the role of the state in Latin America have been epochal,” as MIT’s Ben Ross Schneider writes in a new book on the state of capitalism in the region. <br /><br />But the redevelopment of many of those states has not gone quite as politicians, policymakers, and economic theorists might have anticipated, as Schneider asserts in the book, “Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America,” just published by Cambridge University Press. Many industries in the region, he contends, lack dynamism, since they are controlled by entrenched multinational firms or agglomerations of “business groups.” As a result, Schneider thinks, economic inequality remains higher than it should be.<br /><br />“A lot of the conventional wisdom was that with market reforms, Latin America would gradually evolve into something that looked like the United States, in terms of corporate governance and labor markets,” says Schneider, the Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Brazil program. “But it is something quite different — a different set of institutions, and a different form of capitalism.” <br /><br />Schneider sets out a reform-minded agenda, noting the importance of both education and job opportunities — and observing that the persistence of comfortable relationships between entrenched business and government may prevent new growth opportunities from surfacing.<br /><br /><strong>The dominance of business groups</strong><br /><br />Schneider’s book is based on economic data, archival research on policy and business, and many interviews. “I thought it was a good time, after all of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, to study what we have now,” he says, adding: “We need to look more at what the private sector has been doing and thinking, not just government policy.” <br /><br />Schneider’s research helped confirm the extent to which sprawling, often family-run business groups, with arms in many industries, dominate many national economies. These groups do not really have an equivalent in the U.S. or Europe, Schneider notes, and often grip business sectors so tightly that competition is seriously limited. <br /><br />By the 2000s, the 20 largest firms in Chile, for instance, were responsible for half of the country’s GDP; in Colombia in 2006, 28 business groups controlled 90 percent of the 523 largest nonfinancial firms. A notably low proportion of Latin American companies trade on public stock markets, even in countries such as Brazil and Chile where such markets have grown recently. <br /><br />Among other consequences, the influence of both business groups and multinational firms means that there is relatively little bottom-up growth in, for example, many types of manufacturing. It also creates a cozy, mutually reinforcing stasis between business and policymakers — hurting workers, who do not have wide choice among employers and, with little leverage, experience short tenures in the jobs they do obtain. <br /><br />Such corporate structures, and the resulting lack of competition, affect the incentives for workers to acquire education — one reason the education sector is smaller in Latin America than it is in the U.S., Europe, and much of Asia.<br /><br />“One reason individuals don’t invest so much in skills is because job tenure is so short,” Schneider says. “And many individuals who have invested in their skills are not getting jobs commensurate with their skills.” <br /><br /><strong>‘We should understand them in their own terms’</strong><br /><br />As a general remedy, Schneider would like to see a balance between job-creation policies, investment in education and research — and, if political circumstances ever allow it, a reduction in political interference from entrenched business interests.<br /><br />“You’ve got to have a combined approach,” Schneider asserts. “What’s missing is more the job-creation side.”<br /><br />“Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America” has been well received by other scholars. Torben Iversen, a political scientist at Harvard University, calls it a “rich and agenda-setting study” that poses “a stark challenge … to those who advocate simple solutions such as continued liberalization or renewed state intervention.” <br /><br />Schneider himself describes the book as a “first cut” at a number of issues, hoping it will provoke a more extended discussion about the exact contours of capitalism in the region, and the policies that might help broad-based growth. <br /><br />“I wanted to get this debate started,” he says. “I’m arguing these countries may be on a separate trajectory that’s unique to them, and will result in a different constellation of institutions and strategies. We should understand them in their own terms.”Books and authors, Economics, Humanities, Latin America, Political science, Social sciencesDower granted major ‘lifetime achievement’ award in historyhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/dower-granted-major-%E2%80%98lifetime-achievement%E2%80%99-award-history
MIT professor recognized as ‘pre-eminent scholar’ in East Asian history.Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:30:14 -0500News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/dower-granted-major-%E2%80%98lifetime-achievement%E2%80%99-award-historyMIT historian John Dower has won the American Historical Association’s (AHA) prestigious Award for Scholarly Distinction, one of the highest forms of career recognition in the field. <br /><br />The award is being given for “lifetime achievement in the discipline,” the AHA stated in a news release, and will be formally announced in January at the association’s 128th annual meeting, in Washington. <br /><br />The AHA described Dower as a “pre-eminent scholar in East Asian history” who has “won acclaim as a teacher, and has been equally engaged with audiences beyond the campus.” <br /><br />Dower said he was gratified by the distinction, and called it unexpected.<br /><br />“It’s a great honor,” he told <i>MIT News</i>. “I was surprised. It is a nice feeling.”<br /><br />Dower, the Ford International Professor Emeritus of History, joined MIT in 1991. His research, conducted in both English and Japanese, has largely focused on Japanese history, and on the history and memory of World War II. His path-breaking work on the reconstruction of Japan after the war made the case that the country had been rebuilt on a “hybrid Japanese-American model” of democratic capitalism; his research has also demonstrated the role that racial animus played in intensifying the fighting between the United States and Japan during World War II. <br /><br />In four decades as a professor, Dower’s books have won a litany of prizes. His 1986 work “War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, while his 1999 book “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II” won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, the National Book Award for nonfiction, and the Bancroft Prize, one of the most esteemed awards for works of history. <br /><br />More recently, Dower’s 2010 book, “Cultures of War,” a cross-cultural look at militarism and the imagery of war in society, was a finalist for the National Book Award for nonfiction.<br /><br />Dower said that the AHA award was “very nice as personal recognition, but it’s very gratifying that it brings attention to MIT. We are known for science and technology, but we have very good programs in the social sciences and humanities, and the award reflects that.” <br /><br />At MIT, as the AHA citation notes, Dower has also helped direct the “Visualizing Cultures” project, which has assembled a large collection of visual materials for students and scholars. The project was initiated in 2002 with MIT funding for course development, something that “reflects on MIT’s creativity,” Dower said. <br /><br />Dower previously taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, from 1971 to 1985, and the University of California at San Diego, from 1985 to 1991. He is being given the Award for Scholarly Distinction this year along with Patricia Buckley Ebrey, of the University of Washington, and Walter LaFeber, of Cornell University.John DowerAwards, honors and fellowships, Faculty, History, HumanitiesLincoln Palmer Bloomfield, professor emeritus of political science, dies at 93http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/lincoln-palmer-bloomfield-professor-emeritus-political-science-dies-93
Longtime member of the MIT faculty was noted for his work on containing conflict and averting nuclear escalation.Tue, 05 Nov 2013 19:28:00 -0500News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/lincoln-palmer-bloomfield-professor-emeritus-political-science-dies-93Professor emeritus of political science Lincoln Palmer Bloomfield died Oct. 30 of respiratory failure. He was 93. <br /><br />Bloomfield was a public servant, educator, and author. He was noted for his work on containing conflict and averting nuclear escalation; developing the role of the United Nations; rationalizing the foreign-policy planning process; and managing future competition in the “global commons” of the Arctic and outer space.<br /><br />Building on experimentation by the RAND Corporation, Bloomfield developed the contemporary model for political military war-gaming and ran many exercises for MIT, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and later the U.S. State Department. He taught four semesters at the Institute of Advanced International Studies, residing in Geneva.<br /><br />A 1941 graduate of Harvard University and a veteran of the U.S. Navy — having served during World War II and with the Office of Strategic Services in Burma and China after the war’s end — Bloomfield served for 11 years at the State Department before returning to Harvard for his master’s in public administration (1952) and his PhD (1956). His thesis was awarded Harvard’s Chase Prize and published by Harvard University Press as “Evolution or Revolution,” the first of his 14 books.<br /><br />At MIT, where he taught for 30 years, from 1961 to 1991, Bloomfield became a tenured professor after his book, “The United Nations and U.S. Foreign Policy: A New Look at the National Interest,” (Little, Brown and Co., 1960) gained wide recognition; leading scholar Hans Morgenthau called it “brilliant” and “pioneering.” <br /><br />Bloomfield directed the MIT Arms Control Project and, with Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, ran the Joint Harvard-MIT Arms Control Seminar during the 1960s. President Richard Nixon appointed Bloomfield to the Presidential Commission on the United Nations, chaired by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. With IBM and MIT colleague Allen Moulton, Bloomfield developed CASCON, the first computer-aided tool for policy planners using a database of contemporary conflicts, which was awarded the EDUCOM/NCRIPTAL Award for Distinguished Software in Political Science in 1988.<br /><br />During the period of U.S.-Soviet détente, Bloomfield was one of several U.S. civilian and military experts who traveled repeatedly to Moscow, exploring prospects for nuclear disarmament. In 1970, visiting that city’s Institute for the USA and Canada Studies, Bloomfield ran a simulated gaming exercise in which he assigned to his Soviet hosts the role of Israel in a Middle East conflict. He introduced the now-common phrase “coalitions of the willing” as early as 1970 in correspondence with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In 1979, he returned to Washington to serve for one year in President Jimmy Carter’s administration as director of global issues on the National Security Council staff.<br /><br />Under the sponsorship of the State Department, Bloomfield lectured in 35 countries and received the department’s Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award. He served on the board of visitors of the National Defense University, and was the sole foreign board member of the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security.<br /><br />Bloomfield served as a consultant for HBO and appeared, along with Scott Glenn, Nancy Dickerson, Eric Sevareid, Newt Gingrich, and Eugene McCarthy, in the network’s 1984 movie “Countdown to Looking Glass,” which depicted events leading to a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. For five years, beginning in the late 1980s, he hosted a daily television show, “Fifty Years Ago Today,” on the Monitor Channel, which won a New England Emmy. <br /><br />Bloomfield’s final book and memoir, “Accidental Encounters With History (and Some Lessons Learned),” was published in 2005. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote that this “scholar, practitioner and former colleague” had fulfilled his responsibility to educate “brilliantly in this well-written account of major events shaping the last half of the twentieth century.”<br /><br />Bloomfield, a 56-year resident of Cohasset, Mass., was an avid skier, tennis player, golfer, self-taught classical and jazz pianist, and choral singer. He was a board member of the Unitarian Universalist Association and longtime devoted member of the First Parish Church in Cohasset, where he chaired the Parish Committee, served as moderator three times, sang in the choir, and performed in the annual cabarets.<br /><br />Married for 65 years, he is survived by his wife, Irirangi Coates Bloomfield; daughters Pamela and Diana; son Lincoln Jr.; grandsons Nicholas Bloomfield Culver and Adrian Bloomfield Culver; and granddaughter Alison Noelle Bloomfield.<br /><br />A memorial service will be held at the First Parish Church in Cohasset at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16. Donations in Bloomfield’s honor may be made to the First Parish Church, 23 North Main St., Cohasset, MA 02025, or to a charitable cause of the donor’s choosing.<br /><br />Professor emeritus of political science Lincoln Palmer Bloomfield gave his final lecture at MIT upon his retirement in 1991.Obituaries, Humanities, Political science, Social sciencesDoctor, doctor: Why the job market for married couples in medicine works wellhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/doctor-doctor-why-job-market-married-couples-medicine-works-well
New study in the growing ‘market design’ field of economics explains how a job-market algorithm helps land couples in the same locations.Fri, 01 Nov 2013 04:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/doctor-doctor-why-job-market-married-couples-medicine-works-wellSince World War II, women have entered the American workforce in greater numbers than ever before. For married couples, this presents a wrinkle, since it can be hard for both partners to find a desirable job in the same locale. <br /><br />This issue is particularly pressing in some specialized fields. When doctors graduate from medical school, for instance, they apply for their first jobs through a national clearinghouse in which both job-seekers and institutions express their preferences; a computer program determines the results. That means two-doctor couples are often fearful of not landing in the same geographic location.<br /><br />Now a paper co-authored by an MIT economist sheds new light on the circumstances in which these job-placement programs can, in fact, accommodate married couples quite well. <br /><br />“Our results provide justification for the current rules in practice,” says MIT economist Parag Pathak, who helped conduct the study to “try to understand how far we are from some kind of optimal system.” <br /><br />In many cases, the answer appears to be: not far at all. If the method used is properly calibrated to the size of the job market, the researchers found, then the clearinghouse should work for nearly everyone, couples included. <br /><br /><strong>Seeing if an ad-hoc system works</strong><br /><br />The paper, “Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets,” published this month by the <i>Quarterly Journal of Economics</i>, was written by economists Fuhito Kojima and Alvin Roth of Stanford University, along with Pathak. All three scholars work in the field of “market design,” where they seek to devise rules bringing desirable outcomes to social systems. The paper blends theory and empiricism, bridging the gap between theoretical work suggesting these medical markets cannot work very well and recent data indicating that many clearinghouses do function quite efficiently.<br /><br />In medicine, these mechanisms aim to create a set of “stable matching” results for each year’s applicant pool — that is, job placements in which, after preferences are listed, interviews are conducted, and mutual job decisions are made, there are no remaining pairs of doctors and hospitals who would sooner be matched with each other, but are not. <br /><br />These job-market clearinghouses are built on a simple theory first formalized in 1962 by mathematicians David Gale and Lloyd Shapely. They designed an influential “deferred acceptance” algorithm showing how prospective market partners could pair off without any preferred matches being ignored. But in the medical job market, that theory breaks down when couples apply for jobs at the same time; the 1962 algorithm depends on everyone making decisions independently.<br /><br />In medicine, the centralized job-placement system originated in the 1950s, and by the 1970s, it was increasingly common to find married couples entering the medical job market together. As a result, these clearinghouses began to change their mechanisms by the 1990s, allowing married couples to rank preferences for pairs of jobs. <br /><br />However, “There had never been any real formal basis for those tweaks,” says Pathak, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Economics. That meant it was not clear if there were a better system.<br /><br />Moreover, some previous theoretical work in the field suggested that placing married couples in the same applicant pool as single doctors could make it impossible to find a stable matching. Mathematicians have shown that in some cases, even computing whether a stable matching exists is practically impossible.<br /><br />“The theoretical results seemed to contradict the actual performance of the real-world markets,” Pathak says. Together, Kojima, Pathak, and Roth worked out the assumptions under which it is possible to reconcile the theory with the practice, and used data from the job market for clinical psychologists to test their theory.<br /><br /><strong>Good test results for doctors</strong><br /><br />The researchers found that in order to find a stable outcome, the job market has to be fairly large; that married couples cannot constitute a large portion of the applicant pool; and that applicants must not rank every residency program. <br /><br />And while it might seem intuitive that larger job markets will provide better opportunities, the researchers were able to arrive at some specific conclusions: If there are at least 2,000 jobs available in a given area, and if the number of couples equals the square root of the market size, then a stable matching will occur at least 96 percent of the time. <br /><br />That corresponds with data from the job clearinghouse used by the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) from 1999 to 2007, the researchers found that, on average, there were 3,010 single applicants and 19 pairs of married applicants annually. <br /><br />Moreover, the APPIC data from those years did not record any instances of two-doctor couples who were unable to land in jobs in a stable outcome. The APPIC numbers also show that only 2 percent of the single applicants have had their preferences affected by the presence of married couples in the market.<br /><br />Other scholars have started citing the study in their own work. Mark Braverman, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, calls it an “important” paper because it “showed a setting under which … you’ll be able to find a stable matching.” <br /><br />At the same time, Braverman says of the search for a stable matching, “It’s not like a question you can just ask and answer and forget about.” The circumstances for stability may vary. In that vein, Braverman and Itai Ashlagi, of the MIT Sloan School of Management, have been refining their own algorithm involving couples in the medical job market, which may further ease the conditions under which married doctors can find jobs together.<br /><br />In all, the positive prognosis for doctors is that current circumstances are helping their job-market clearinghouses work well. But for his part, Pathak also regards the paper as just one result in the larger scholarly effort to improve the methods employed in actual markets. The motivation of all such studies, he notes, is “coming up with practical solutions to real problems.”Economics, Humanities, Medicine, Social sciences, JobsSaid and Done for October 2013http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/said-and-done-magazine-for-october-2013
Digest of the MIT humanities, arts and social sciencesMon, 28 Oct 2013 21:00:00 -0400Emily Hiestand, Communications Director | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/said-and-done-magazine-for-october-2013Said and Done<i> is the monthly, photo-rich publication from MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, integrating feature articles with news, research and events to give a distilled overview of the school's endeavors. For the complete edition, visit <a href="http://bit.ly/17rAt46" target="_blank">Said and Done</a>. </i><br /><br /> October features include: <br /><br /><strong>Students discover new possibilities at the inaugural TOUR de SHASS expo </strong><br /> Several hundred students, along with SHASS faculty and staff, gathered in September for the inaugural TOUR de SHASS — a lively academic expo showcasing MIT's wide range of classes in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. <br /><a href="http://bit.ly/15S1vX1" target="_blank">Story + Photographs</a> | <a href="http://bit.ly/shasstour" target="_blank">T</a><a href="http://bit.ly/1cU8EsO" target="_blank">ake the TOUR de SHASS online</a><br /><br /> <strong>Jazz at MIT interactive timeline launched </strong><a href="http://bit.ly/18llKuk" target="_blank"><br /></a>The Jazz at MIT timeline — which includes audio recordings, images, videos, and text — represents major activities, awards and honors celebrated by the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and other MIT jazz groups over the past five+ decades. <br /><a href="http://bit.ly/18llKuk" target="_blank">Jazz at MIT Timeline</a> <strong> </strong>|<strong> </strong><a href="http://bit.ly/T6u61v" target="_blank">Jazz online at the Listening Room</a><br /><br /> <strong>Karina Arnaez named Diversity Manager for MIT SHASS</strong><br />Dean Deborah Fitzgerald is pleased to announce that Karina Arnaez has joined the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences in the newly created role of Diversity Manager. Arnaez, MIT's first <span>school-level, full-time Diversity Manager, has worked in diversity and recruitment at Boston College, Cardinal Health, and EMC<sup>2.</sup> <br /><a href="http://bit.ly/1638egS" target="_blank">Meet Karina Arnaez</a><br /><br /> <strong>Research Portfolio </strong><br />Research is the engine for the School's capacity to help meet the world's great challenges. To name just a few areas of impact, MIT SHASS research helps alleviate poverty, safeguard elections, steer economies, inform health policy, assess the impact of new technologies, understand human language, and create new forms at the juncture of art and science.<br /><a href="http://bit.ly/Mv2UTA" target="_blank">Research Portfolio</a><br /><br /> <strong>Bookshelf<br /></strong>The research of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences appears principally in the form of books and publications, and music and theater productions. These gems of the School provide new knowledge and analysis, innovation and insight, guidance for policy, and nourishment for lives.<br /><a href="http://bit.ly/PPa5ts" target="_blank">Take a look</a></span>TOUR de SHASS event Arts, Awards, honors and fellowships, Economics, Faculty, History, Humanities, Music, Social sciencesOlafur Eliasson receives 2014 McDermott Awardhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/olafur-eliasson-2014-mcdermott-award
Award includes artist residency, pop-up exhibitions, public lecture, $100,000 prize and galaThu, 24 Oct 2013 14:50:00 -0400Arts at MIThttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/olafur-eliasson-2014-mcdermott-awardThe Council for the Arts at MIT is pleased to announce that Olafur Eliasson is the recipient of the 2014, 40th anniversary Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT. Renowned for the multi-faceted practice of his studio in Berlin, Eliasson creates ambitious public art projects, large-scale installations, architectural pavilions, major art exhibitions, spatial experiments, sensory experiences and a distinctive art and social business enterprise -- Little Sun, a solar powered lamp that is “a work of art that works in life.” Eliasson’s creative practice above all reveals that art shapes life in a way that transforms reality.<br /><br />The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT celebrates individuals whose artistic trajectory reveals that they will achieve the highest distinction in their fields and continue to produce inspiring work for many years to come. The $100,000 prize represents an investment in the recipient’s future creative work, rather than a prize for a particular project or lifetime of achievement. The official announcement is made at the Council’s 41st annual meeting at MIT on October 24, 2013, and Eliasson will be presented with the award at a gala in his honor on March 13, 2014.<br /><br />Upon receiving the award, Eliasson’s said: “Through abstraction, we shape the world. Through art, we translate thoughts, intuitions, feelings and intentions into actions that transform reality. It is a great honor for me to receive the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, an institution with a long tradition of turning thinking into doing.”<br /><br />“MIT recognizes the broad reach of Olafur Eliasson’s art practice, which extends the boundaries of our sensory perception and awareness about what art can do in the world. His art is at once intellectually rigorous and socially aware," said Philip S. Khoury, MIT associate provost and Ford International Professor of History. "Eliasson's collaborative approach to artistic creation will resonate in MIT’s culture, and we look forward to mutually productive interactions with faculty, students and researchers in the arts, science and technology during his visit to MIT in March 2014.”<br /><br />Eliasson’s work encompasses a broad range of creative practices spanning art, science and psychology, supported by a prodigious studio. He has made strikingly original contributions to public art, architecture, and recently, social entrepreneurship. Eliasson’s popular installation "The weather project," an immense artificial sun, produced a sui generis immersive environment, transforming the cavernous turbine hall of London’s Tate Modern with ethereal light and fog. <br /><br />Through such philosophical investigations of light, color, atmosphere and water, Eliasson probes the nature of space and human perception. Most recently, Eliasson collaborated with engineer Frederik Ottesen to develop Little Sun: a portable solar-powered LED lamp for the 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to electricity. <br /><br /><strong>Campus residency and public programs</strong><br /><br />A distinctive feature of the Award is a short residency at MIT, which includes a public presentation of the artist’s work, substantial interaction with students and faculty and a gala that convenes national and international leaders in the arts. The goal of the residency is to provide the recipient with unparalleled access to the creative energy and cutting-edge research at the Institute and to develop mutually enlightening relationships in the MIT community.<br /><br />During his residency, Eliasson and his team will have the opportunity to connect with path-breaking advances in design, entrepreneurship and energy research at MIT. At Hacking Arts — MIT's first annual festival and hackathon to explore the intersection of arts, technology, and entrepreneurship — students from across the Boston region were challenged to improve Little Sun. The product was showcased on Oct. 18 at MIT Energy Night and is on view at the MIT Museum through March 2014.<br /><br />The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT was established in 1974 by the Council for the Arts at MIT. It recognizes innovative talents in any arts discipline and offers its recipient a $100,000 cash prize, a gala and a campus residency. The selection process reflects MIT’s commitment to risk taking, problem solving and the idea of connecting creative minds across disciplines. The award honors Eugene McDermott, cofounder of Texas Instruments and long-time friend and benefactor of MIT.Olafur EliassonArts, Awards, honors and fellowships, Special events and guest speakers, Humanities, McDermott AwardBuilding culture in digital mediahttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/fox-harrell-phantasmal-media-1023
Fox Harrell’s new book presents a ‘manifesto’ detailing how computing can create powerful new forms of expression and culture.Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/fox-harrell-phantasmal-media-1023The video game “Grand Theft Auto V,” which recently grossed $1 billion in its first three days on sale, is set in the fictional city of Los Santos. But if you’ve played the game, you probably don’t need anyone to tell you that Los Santos is a simulation of Los Angeles. The setting, the characters, and the objects in the game all draw upon — and reinforce — a reservoir of existing cultural images about theft, violence, urban life, and other aspects of U.S. society.<br /><br />Such elements of stories, and indeed many cultural images based on particular worldviews, are “phantasms,” as MIT associate professor of digital media Fox Harrell writes in his new book about computing and expression. A phantasm, as Harrell writes, is “an image integrated with cultural knowledge and beliefs.” Such images help imbue stories with meaning — constructing imaginative worlds that may affect an audience member’s understanding of society or even sense of self, for better or for worse. <br /><br />Harrell’s book, “Phantasmal Media,” published this week by MIT Press, outlines an approach to analyzing many forms of digital media that prompt these images in users, and then building computing systems — seen in video games, social media, e-commerce sites, or computer-based artwork — with enough adaptability to let designers and users express a wide range of cultural preferences, rather than being locked into pre-existing options. <br /><br />“A lot of people take interfaces we use everyday in media, such as online stores or video games, for granted,” says Harrell, who is a faculty member in both MIT’s Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. “They think that’s just the way the world is structured. But when we see images or characters in a video-game world, or when we see a virtual world, developers are building values into all these systems.”<br /><br /><strong>Poetry and programming</strong><br /><br />Why does it matter which images we process? Because it affects the way we think about ourselves, for one thing. In a famed 1947 experiment that Harrell notes in the book, African-American children were asked to play with two dolls that were identical except for their coloration: One was pale, blue-eyed, and blond, and the other was darker-skinned, brown-eyed, and dark-haired. The study showed that a majority of the children thought the light doll looked “nice” and that the darker doll looked “bad.” <br /><br />Clearly, “the children had internalized negative self-conceptions,” as Harrell states in the book, which, he adds, were “based on the dominant worldview of the time.”<br /><br />In much of “Phantasmal Media,” however, Harrell argues that, conversely, it is possible to build empowering phantasms, rather than oppressive ones, and finds examples ranging from the website of a creative record label to works of science fiction. Such novel imagery can also reveal phantasms, shaking up habits of content development that may otherwise rely on conventional cultural assumptions. <br /><br />“It’s not that people are engineering values into images with the aim of manipulating everyone,” Harrell says. “But people are building systems based on their training and experiences, and at some point there are subjective decisions being made and values are being implemented into these systems.” <br /><br />And precisely because computational media are expanding, Harrell — who also founded and directs MIT’s Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab) — would like to seize the moment and nudge designers, programmers, and engineers in the direction of creating content with depth and meaning, while exercising sharp self-awareness of their own cultural assumptions. In one chapter of the book, Harrell takes some of the symbolic analysis that cognitive scientists have produced about poet Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and presents, in tandem, an analysis of developer Jason Rohrer’s 2007 video game “Passage,” which is built thematically around life, mortality, and death. Then, Harrell charts in detail the programming decisions that go into a game such as “Passage.” <br /><br />The larger point is not that creative expression should always involve weighty, inward-looking content like Frost’s poems or Rohrer’s game, but that it is possible to think systematically about the values embodied in media works, and create various blueprints for digital designers today. In so doing, programmers can think about how to build media works such as games that express the thoughts and feelings of players, rather than games in which players deploy characters representing familiar cultural tropes. <br /><br />“On the engineering side, people want something that can be rigorously pinned down,” Harrell says. “I’m showing how you can describe the structure of these [digital media] systems in precise mathematical ways, and use very structured tools to think about their values.”<br /><br /><strong>A manifesto for computational media</strong><br /><br />Scholars have responded well to “Phantasmal Media”: George Lewis, a music professor at Columbia University, calls it a “bold and audacious view of the relationship between computing and the imagination,” and adds that it “is what a groundbreaking book looks like.” <br /><br />Harrell is not explicitly judgmental about the mass-market video game content that produces blockbuster hits. Instead, his project is meant to spur people to think about the creative possibilities of digital media — that it can enable products and programs other than adrenaline-heavy games. <br /><br />“The powerful thing for me about many works of art, literature, and cinema, is their ability to both create imaginative worlds and poetically express ideas that cause us to reflect upon and even change our societies and cultures,” Harrell says. “If you look at art that contains that kind of poetic social commentary, you can ask what would it take for computing to get there? This is a manifesto to say that computational media has that potential.”Books and authors, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Digital, Digital technology, Faculty, Gaming, Humanities, Internet, Video games, Web, WritingAdrift in a sea of changehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/rosalind-williams-the-triumph-of-human-empire-1018
In a new book, MIT historian Rosalind Williams examines the deep tension authors Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Morris felt about technology.Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/rosalind-williams-the-triumph-of-human-empire-1018In 1890, living in Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson sent a letter to his fellow writer Henry James, explaining a momentous decision on his part: Disillusioned with a rapidly changing, technologically driven world, Stevenson intended to remain in “exile” on the island, never to return to his native Britain. <br /><br />“I was never fond of towns, houses, society or (it seems) civilisation,” Stevenson wrote, explaining his choice. Indeed, he died in Samoa four years later.<br /><br />But how exactly did Stevenson, who grew up in a well-off family of Scottish civil engineers, wind up lamenting technological progress and its social effects from a remote island in the South Pacific? And how should we understand this kind of uneasy response to technological advancement more generally?<br /><br />Those are among the questions MIT historian Rosalind Williams addresses in her new book, “The Triumph of Human Empire,” just published by the University of Chicago Press. It is a study of three famous authors — Stevenson, Jules Verne, and William Morris — and their complicated responses to technological and social change: embracing some innovations while lamenting that many changes were diminishing our sense of connection with the natural world and the past, and even creating new social inequities.<br /><br />Much as the current day is awash in technology-based innovation, so too was the Victorian era: As Verne (1828-1905) noted in an 1891 interview, he had lived through the introduction or popularization of trains, trams, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, steamship, and commercial electricity. <br /><br />In the book, Williams analyzes how the works of Verne, Morris (1834-1896), and Stevenson (1850-1894) — while often remembered for their flights of enjoyable fantasy — are actually deeply grounded in this “decisive turning point in the human story,” as she writes, when they could see that “human needs, desires, works and actions would more and more dominate the planet” in the future. That also speaks to our world, she believes, as we are confronted with resource scarcity, climate change, dangerous military conflicts, and changes in behavior oriented around technology.<br /><br />“There is a deep belief in progress of science and technologies that you can see in the 19th century, and is extremely powerful today, but there is also the anxiety that comes from that belief,” says Williams, the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). “This book is intended to explore that paradox.”<br /><br /><strong>‘They could see over the horizon’</strong><br /><br />Significantly, none of these writers had a lifelong, reactionary distaste for technology. Stevenson took pride in his family’s engineering feats, for instance, while Verne gained renown for his stories about futuristic submarines, moon landings, and even penned a (posthumously discovered) novel about life in Europe under a radically changed climate. They all shared, Williams asserts, a geographic link around the North Sea that made them especially interested in human exploration through water, but they thought about the impact of many technologies. <br /><br />“What they’re writing about science and technology is astoundingly prescient and true,” Williams says. “They could see over the horizon.” Taking an approach Williams has used throughout her career, “The Triumph of Human Empire” employs fictional works as a window into the human response to rapid social transformation.<br /><br />“Science and technologies have [created] astonishing accomplishments, and real material changes,” Williams says, “but I’m most interested in how they have an effect on people’s lived experiences.”<br /><br />Those rapid changes form a recurring tension in Verne’s works, in which technology enables previously unimaginable journeys and feats of exploration, yet traps people in its grip. After all, Pierre Arronax, the scientist narrator of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” (1870), is imprisoned by Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus — privy to remarkable views of life undersea, but unable to escape.<br /><br />Morris’ response to technology was more explicitly political: Famous for his poetry, in the 1880s he threw himself into left-wing politics, and founded a noted decorative arts company. As a writer, he suddenly started translating Icelandic sagas — as a way, Williams thinks, of aligning himself with a more pristine society than heavily technologized Britain. <br /><br />“Our civilisation is passing like a blight, daily growing heavier and more poisonous, over the whole face of the country,” Morris wrote. <br /><br />Stevenson’s grasp of the global effects of technological change seems to have emerged as he journeyed first to America by steamship and then across the United States by train, in pursuit of his future wife, Fanny, who was then living in California. The trip appears to have been an epiphany for Stevenson, as he realized how many of the world’s travelers were not journeying by choice, but as migrants displaced by a rapidly globalizing economy. After a few years in California, he set forth on a sailboat cruise of the South Pacific in search of a healthier climate, new adventures, and new income based on travel writing. <br /><br />“All of them had to do some sort of pivot,” Williams says. “They grew up in one world and had to realize they were living in another one.”<br /><br />“The Triumph of Human Empire” has been praised by colleagues; John Tresch, a historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania, has called the book “engaging, highly informative, and entertaining.” <br /><br /><strong>The ‘rolling apocalypse’</strong><br /><br />Williams concludes “The Triumph of Human Empire” by observing that Verne, Morris, and Stevenson all seemed to experience technological change not as a clean break from the past, but as a long-term “rolling apocalypse” in which their cherished worlds were erased over time. <br /><br />“I think this shows two coexisting visions of history,” Williams says. “One is history as progress, but there is also this other vision of history as rolling apocalypse. A lot of us are living with that ambiguity today, which is a very ambivalent moment in history. You can’t just say [changes] are good or bad — but we need to understand their complexity.”<br /><br />This means, Williams says, that we should not regard the tales of Verne, Morris, and Stevenson as sheer escapism; that escapism is telling us something about their times.<br /><br />“In each of their cases, their personal reinventions were as writers, too,” Williams observes. “It just shows how important writing is. Part of the subtext of the book is to take art seriously. That’s the first place to go to figure out what’s going on in the world.”Books and authors, Faculty, History, Humanities, Literature, languages and writing, Technology and societyTOUR de SHASS expo launchedhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/tour-de-shass-expo-launched
Students &#039;Take the Tour&#039; at travel-themed expoThu, 17 Oct 2013 20:22:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/tour-de-shass-expo-launched<br /><br />Several hundred MIT students gathered this September for the inaugural TOUR de SHASS — an academic expo showcasing the wide range of courses within MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).<br /><br />The expo gave students a chance to “Take the Tour” — visiting information stations staffed by faculty and undergraduate academic administrators (UAAs) from all 13 of the School’s fields of study: anthropology; economics; political science and international studies; foreign languages and literatures; history; linguistics; literature; comparative media studies/writing; music, philosophy; theater arts; science, technology, and society; and women’s and gender studies.<br /><br /><strong>Exploring new fields and classes </strong><br /><br />Like many students, Theresa Santiano-Mchatton ’14 was surprised to discover new classes and possible areas of study: “There are a lot of new classes in different fields that I hadn’t heard of,” she said, “and I’ve been at MIT long enough that I thought I knew all of the HASS classes. It was really cool to learn about the new subjects that have been created. I found out about a Course 17 introduction to international relations class that I’m going to check out.”<br /><br />That was the goal organizers said: for students to discover MIT's great range and depth of humanities, arts, and social science options, and begin to discern which areas will be the most meaningful for their personal academic and personal goals.<br /><br />Catalyzed by an idea from the SHASS UAAs, the expo was organized by HASS academic administrator Liz Friedman and UAAs Daria Johnson, Karen Gardner, and Irene Hartford, with support from the Office of the Dean, and SHASS faculty.<br /><br /><strong>Discovering options </strong><br /><br />Students at the event also discovered options for pursuing a double major. Hundreds of MIT students each year choose to be double majors, combining a science or technology field with economics or music, comparative media studies, literature, language, or history.<br /><br />“I’m double majoring mechanical engineering and writing, said Oluwatobi Lanre-Amos, ’15. "It’s amazing that I have this opportunity to work with the great writers we have here at MIT — to have them personally help me write something.”<br /><br /><strong>Empowering</strong><br /><br />Dean Deborah Fitzgerald, who greeted students at the expo, spoke about MIT's mission in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.<br /><br />"At MIT we know that generating practical solutions for the world's great challenges requires technical and scientific creativity, and an understanding of the world’s complexities — political, cultural, and economic.<br /><br />In their HASS courses, MIT students gain cultural, political, and historical perspectives, and skills in communication and critical thinking — all of which are foundations for success and leadership, at home and around the world. The SHASS faculty teach every MIT undergraduate, and our goal is to empower our students — to help them serve the world well, with innovations, and lives, that are rich in meaning and wisdom."<br /><br /><strong>Swag!</strong><br /><br />For students who attended the inaugural TOUR de SHASS: bring your completed SHASSPORT booklet to any of the SHASS field offices during October to receive some branded gear.<br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>Arts, Faculty, Humanities, Social sciences, Special events and guest speakers, StudentsFighting for social justicehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/student-profile-cory-hernandez-1015
With U.S. history and constitutional law on his mind, senior Cory Hernandez envisions a society that welcomes all — starting with MIT.Tue, 15 Oct 2013 04:00:00 -0400Jessica Fujimori, MIT News correspondenthttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/student-profile-cory-hernandez-1015<p>Ask senior Cory Hernandez how MIT can improve, and he won’t hesitate to tell you. Whether the subject is the Institute’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ) community or its political science department, Hernandez is full of ideas, and is not afraid to speak them.<br />
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With a passion for American history and for social equality, Hernandez dreams of serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. As he nears the completion of a double major in political science and American studies and a master’s in political science, Hernandez looks forward to law school and then the courthouse — an ambition that first sprouted in high school.<br />
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<strong>Finding his path</strong><br />
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When he was 12 years old, Hernandez came out as gay in his hometown of Mesa, Ariz. “Even then, I was outspoken,” he says. Within a few weeks, he noticed changes in the way he was treated. Ugly names, paper, gum, and pencils were thrown his way between classes, he wrote last year <a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N19/hernandez.html" target="_blank">in an opinion piece</a> published in <i>The Tech</i>, MIT’s student newspaper. Administrators at his middle school told Hernandez to cut his hair shorter, to change his behavior, to fit in better.<br />
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Now Hernandez shrugs when asked about the backlash: “Yes, the bullying was awful, but I don’t regret coming out. Ultimately, coming out helped me then start to think about a lot of other issues.”<br />
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As Hernandez navigated his way through middle and high school, he nurtured a love of history. Particularly fascinated by the American revolutionary era and U.S. law, Hernandez was also very strong in math. Once at MIT, however, it was history and law that continued to captivate him.<br />
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Hernandez devoured constitutional law and political science classes with his now-thesis advisors Chris Capozzola, an associate professor of history, and Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Hernandez says Capozzola — who has served as a mentor, friend, and adviser for his American studies major, thesis, and law school applications — has been the most influential person he has met since coming to MIT.<br />
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An American history class with the late Pauline Maier, the William Kenan Jr. Professor of History, also greatly influenced Hernandez. “Professor Maier was amazing; I had never had a professor like her,” he says. “She was so well-versed in the field, she had written many books about what she was teaching, and she facilitated great discussion.”<br />
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To Hernandez, history is more than just a tool to study his chosen profession. “It helps me understand the world better,” he says.<br />
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Hernandez got the chance to apply what he learned in his classes during an internship with Sen. John Kerry’s office the summer after his sophomore year. “That helped me see the legislative side of things, and I definitely want that foundation to understand the intent as well as the letter of the law,” he says. “A lot of court decisions look at what exactly Congress was debating when they passed the law, like what they were actually trying to do with it.”<br />
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Last year, Hernandez worked at the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association. “It gave me a really good chance to work not only in a legal setting directly, but specifically in pro bono work, which is something I definitely want to pursue as an attorney,” Hernandez says.<br />
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<div class="video_captions"><img border="0" src="/newsoffice/sites/mit.edu.newsoffice/files/images/cory-hernandez-560.jpg" /><br />
<span class="image_caption">Cory Hernandez</span> <span class="image_credit">Photo: Allegra Boverman</span></div>
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<strong>A welcoming MIT</strong><br />
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While the courtroom may one day be Hernandez’s venue for work toward a fair society, for now he focuses on MIT, where he has spearheaded numerous campaigns, student groups, and events to create a more welcoming and vibrant community.<br />
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His efforts have included the Living Pink survey, which was used to create a guide to residences at MIT for LGBTQ students, as well as a campaign that encouraged MIT faculty, staff, and students to post rainbow-themed “You Are Welcome Here” signs — now ubiquitous around the Institute — on their doors. “It really helps people feel like MIT is friendly and accepting toward them,” Hernandez says. Last year, Hernandez tackled diversity and mental health as well, helping to found a multicultural programming club and joining Active Minds, a student group focused on lifting the stigma surrounding mental health issues.<br />
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Throughout his more than three years at the Institute, Hernandez feels that he’s been able to make a difference. “Sometimes people that I’ve never met come up to me and say, ‘I’ve been here for a while, and I know what things were like a few years ago.’ They say that with the work that I’ve done, they’ve really seen a big change in the climate of acceptance here,” Hernandez says. “It’s nice to hear, even those small things.”<br />
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Hernandez’s MIT-oriented efforts also include leadership in the Undergraduate Association and the Association of Student Activities, where he serves as treasurer and an undergraduate member-at-large, respectively. “I started realizing you can actually change MIT and improve things for students, which is why I got more and more involved,” Hernandez says. “For instance, we have around 470 student groups, and it’s the student government’s job to provide resources for them, and we do it. Which I love, because MIT is really about enabling people and empowering them to do what they want to do.”</p>
Cory HernandezHistory, Humanities, Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ), Political science, Profile, Social sciences, Student life, Students, Undergraduate, CommunityAlumnus Robert J. Shiller wins Nobel Prize in economic scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/robert-shiller-nobel-prize-1014
Economist is honored for his work on the long-term fluctuations of asset prices.Mon, 14 Oct 2013 12:30:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/robert-shiller-nobel-prize-1014Robert J. Shiller SM ’68, PhD ’72, an economist known for his work on the long-term fluctuations of asset prices in markets, will share the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for 2013, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2013/press.html" target="_blank">announced this morning</a>.<br /><br />Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University, shares the award with Eugene F. Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, both of the University of Chicago. The academy announced that the award was being given to the three economists “for their empirical analysis of asset prices.”<br /><br />The academy cited Shiller’s work, dating to the early 1980s, showing that stock prices are not as tightly linked to future dividends as the previous theory had held, but can become rapidly inflated. However, Shiller found, such swings in the market also lend themselves to a level of long-term predictability, since market corrections tend to ensue. <br /><br />That principle, Shiller found, applied to bond prices as well. Shiller has subsequently become well known among the general public for using this approach to analyze the housing market. <br /><br />As an economist, Shiller has also engaged the public sphere to a notable degree, writing widely read books for general audiences, including “Irrational Exuberance” (2000) and “Animal Spirits” (2009), co-authored with George Akerlof PhD ’66. He also helped develop the housing market data-analysis tools known as the Case-Shiller home price indices.<br /><br />Shiller is the 80th winner of a Nobel Prize <a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/awards/nobel.html" target="_blank">with a connection to MIT</a>. Four people have won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences while serving as members of the MIT faculty; another nine MIT alumni, including Shiller, have won the prize. An additional four former MIT faculty have won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences.Robert Shiller SM and#39;68, PhD and#39;72 is a professor of economics at Yale University.Awards, honors and fellowships, Faculty, Nobel Prizes, Alumni/ae, Economics, Graduate, postdoctoral, HumanitiesAdvantage, Arnaudhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/faculty-profile-arnaud-costinot-1011
Economist Arnaud Costinot studies international trade — and has helped revive interest in economics’ venerable Theory of Comparative Advantage.Fri, 11 Oct 2013 04:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/faculty-profile-arnaud-costinot-1011If you start talking international trade with Arnaud Costinot, chances are he will have an advantage over you. Costinot, an MIT economist who specializes in trade, has an easy command of a large set of facts, models, ideas and outstanding research problems in the field.<br /><br />But Costinot, it happens, also has an edge over most other trade economists when it comes to one of the most famous ideas in economics: the Theory of Comparative Advantage, formulated by the Scotsman David Ricardo in 1817. <br /> <br />
<div class="video_captions"><img src="/newsoffice/sites/mit.edu.newsoffice/files/images/costinot-560.jpg" border="0" /><br /> <span class="image_caption">Arnaud Costinot</span> <span class="image_credit">Photo: M. Scott Brauer</span></div>
<br /> Ricardo thought that instead of trying to produce a wide range of goods, countries could grow by specializing in the goods they could produce most cheaply, and then trading those goods with other countries. This made sense, Ricardo claimed, even when a country could make multiple products more cheaply, in absolute terms, than other countries.<br /><br />How? Suppose, Ricardo posited, that England produces cloth more cheaply than wine, while Portugal produces wine more cheaply than cloth. And suppose Portugal produces <i>both</i> products more cheaply than England does. Both countries could still benefit from trading in equal terms: England could specialize in making cloth, and trade that for wine. But Portugal could specialize in making wine, and trade that for England’s cloth — which would be the cheapest way to acquire cloth, even if Portugal’s own cloth was cheaper to make than England’s. <br /><br />Certainly there are potential complications in such scenarios, such as terms of trade and transportation costs. But the streamlined nature of Ricardo’s model has meant, in Costinot’s view, that too often, “It was really viewed as this pedagogical device for undergraduates and nothing else, because it was just too simple.”<br /><br />So instead of confining the Theory of Comparative Advantage to the lecture hall and seminar room, Costinot has made it the focus of a series of studies — a large strand of his own body of work. As he puts it, he is frequently “revisiting this idea, extending it, generalizing it, confronting it with the data, and quantifying the importance that it may have for welfare.” <br /><br />Among other things, Costinot and MIT colleague Dave Donaldson co-authored a paper, published last year, that used agricultural data extracted from 55 countries to show that there is indeed a link between comparative advantage and specialization, something that is hard to demonstrate empirically. Pol Antras, an economist at Harvard University, called it “one of these papers where you think somebody should have done it 50 years ago.”<br /><br /><strong>Home port: Dunkerque</strong><br /><br />Costinot grew up in Dunkerque, the French city on the North Sea famed as the site of an enormous evacuation of British troops in 1940. His father was a teacher and his mother is a nurse. They encouraged him to apply to the college-preparatory section of the Louis-le-Grand — the esteemed school in Paris where the likes of Voltaire and Moliere studied. After two years there, Costinot was accepted to the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, one of France’s elite colleges.<br /><br />At first, Costinot wanted to study physics or math, but changed his mind after a seminar talk by a French government official who explained “how the French thought about the Euro, German reunification, all sorts of things like that. I thought that was great. These were the kinds of questions that I wanted to understand and shed light on.” <br /><br />Costinot wound up majoring in applied math, but with a second major in economics. Before long he wound up in Princeton University’s PhD program in economics, where he received his doctorate in four years. After three years on the faculty of the University of California at San Diego, Costinot moved to MIT. <br /><br />While Costinot may have left Dunkerque long ago, his hometown hasn’t entirely left him. For one thing, he has known his wife, who lives with him and their two children in the Boston area, since they met in Dunkerque, two decades ago.<br /><br /><strong>Widespread gain, local losses</strong><br /><br />For another thing, growing up in Dunkerque made a big impression on Costinot — as he watched its shipbuilding business disappear, and its commercial port shrink. The shipbuilding industry lost business to South Korea, and the port lost business to European neighbors such as Rotterdam and Antwerp. It was an early lesson for him in the instabilities, and local effects, of international trade. <br /><br />“The whole [shipyard] shut down in the 1980s, and the port also shrank dramatically,” Costinot recalls. As a result, he says, “I was perhaps more sensitive than others to those questions.”For this reason, Costinot is frank about the economic effects of international trade. <br /><br />“Losses from trade tend to be much more concentrated than gains,” he acknowledges. If T-shirts bought by Americans are now made largely in China, he notes, the effects will be felt through income lost in clusters of communities that depended more heavily on the textile industry — even though the net result may be a gain in welfare for the country as a whole, as tens of millions of people save a little on clothing expenses. <br /><br />Part of Costinot’s long-term research agenda, he says, is to try to measure the gains as accurately as possible.<br /><br />“If the gains from trade are very small, would you really want to have many distributional consequences?” he asks. “Many people would say no. Trying to get at the quantitative question is also something I feel is important.”<br /><br />And, he thinks, the nature of global trade today makes it appealing to use the Theory of Comparative Advantage as a building block for study. Back in the Cold War, more trade was between highly developed, economically similar countries such as the United States, Japan and the nations of Western Europe. That may have led economists to seek out other reasons for trade besides the one Ricardo pinpointed. Today — with the growth of China and Latin American economies, among others — many dissimilar countries, with wildly varying institutions, are trading with each other.<br /><br />“The reason why there is a comeback of Ricardian theory today is, in part, as a response to those trends,” Costinot says. Trade between developed and less-developed economies “is on the rise and it seems to be quite different. We may need new theories, or old theories and their extensions may be better suited to it.”Arnaud CostinotEconomics, Humanities, Profile, Faculty, Trade, Social sciencesMIT historian&#039;s book honoredhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/mit-historians-book-honored
Harriet Ritvo’s &quot;The Animal Estate&quot; named to list of 100 most significant publications by Harvard University PressThu, 10 Oct 2013 14:07:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/mit-historians-book-honoredHarvard University Press (HUP), celebrating its centennial year, recently selected MIT historian Harriet Ritvo’s book, "The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age," as one of its 100 most significant publications.<br /><br />“Some of these works were instant classics, while others have seen their stature and influence grow over decades,” says Susan Wallace Boehmer, editor-in-chief of Harvard University Press. “Whether through immediate impact or lasting contribution, each of these titles has been significant, both for the Press and for the wider debates and conversations they have started or joined.”<br /><br />In "The Animal Estate" (1987), Ritvo explores Victorian understandings of animals in a variety of contexts, from livestock breeding to the imperial hunt. She explains how their representation and their treatment also reflected attitudes and tensions within British society.<br /><br />Delighted to discover her work was included in the HUP <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/about/centennial.html" target="_blank">commemoration</a>, Ritvo, the Arthur J. Conner Professor of History, explains that, “'The Animal Estate' was one of the first books in which animals were treated as serious historical subjects. Since its publication, scholarly interest in animals has burgeoned in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences."<br /><br /><strong>A new genre of historical literature</strong><br /><br />“'The Animal Estate' became a foundational text for the new field of animal studies and remains one of the most significant — and sophisticated — histories of how animals have served as metaphors for all kinds of human assumptions and aspirations,” says Janet Browne, department head and Aramont Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.<br /><br />“Few authors have so thoughtfully brought the world of animals into the canon of historical literature. I read it when it was first published and loved it! It is a joy to see a new generation of readers encounter it for the first time.”<br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Communications Assistant: Kierstin Wesolowski</p>Harriet Ritvo, Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at MITAnimals, Awards, honors and fellowships, Books and authors, Environment, Faculty, History, History of science, HumanitiesAn experiment puts auditing under scrutinyhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/experiment-puts-auditing-under-scrutiny-1009
Unique study reduces pollution in India while calling conventional auditing markets into question.Wed, 09 Oct 2013 07:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/experiment-puts-auditing-under-scrutiny-1009The structure of the auditing business appears problematic: Typically, major companies pay auditors to examine their books under the so-called “third-party” audit system. But when an auditing firm’s revenues come directly from its clients, the auditors have an incentive not to deliver bad news to them. <br /><br />So: Does this arrangement affect the actual performance of auditors?<br /> <br />In an eye-opening experiment involving roughly 500 industrial plants in the state of Gujarat, in western India, changing the auditing system has indeed produced dramatically different outcomes — reducing pollution, and more generally calling into question the whole practice of letting firms pay the auditors who scrutinize them.<br /> <br />“There is a fundamental conflict of interest in the way auditing markets are set up around the world,” says MIT economist Michael Greenstone, one of the co-authors of the study, whose findings are published today in the <i>Quarterly Journal of Economics</i>. “We suggested some reforms to remove the conflict of interest, officials in Gujarat implemented them, and it produced notable results.”<br /><br />The two-year experiment was conducted by MIT and Harvard University researchers along with the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB). It found that randomly assigning auditors to plants, paying auditors from central funds, double-checking their work, and rewarding the auditors for accuracy had large effects. Among other things, the project revealed that 59 percent of the plants were actually violating India’s laws on particulate emissions, but only 7 percent of the plants were cited for this offense when standard audits were used. <br /><br />Across all types of pollutants, 29 percent of audits, using the standard practice, wrongly reported that emissions were below legal levels. <br /><br />The study also produced real-world effects: The state used the information to enforce its pollution laws, and within six months, air and water pollution from the plants receiving the new form of audit were significantly lower than at plants assessed using the traditional method. <br /> <br />The co-authors of the paper are Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT; Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT; Rohini Pande, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Nicholas Ryan PhD ’12, now a visiting postdoc at Harvard. <br /><br /><strong>The power of random assignment</strong><br /><br />The experiment involved 473 industrial plants in two parts of Gujarat, which has a large manufacturing industry. Since 1996 the GPCB has used the third-party audit system, in which auditors check air and water pollution levels three times annually, then submit a yearly report to the GPCB.<br /><br />To conduct the study, 233 of the plants tried a new arrangement: Instead of auditors being hired by the companies running the power plants, the GPCB randomly assigned them to plants in this group. The auditors were paid fixed fees from a pool of money; 20 percent of their audits were randomly chosen for re-examination. Finally, the auditors received incentive payments for accurate reports. <br /><br />In comparing the 233 plants using the new method with the 240 using the standard practice, the researchers uncovered that almost 75 percent of traditional audits reported particulate-matter emissions just below the legal limit; using the randomized method, only 19 percent of plants fell in that narrow band. <br /><br />All told, across several different air- and water-pollution measures, inaccurate reports of plants complying with the law dropped by about 80 percent when the randomized method was employed. <br /><br />The researchers emphasize that the experiment enabled the real-world follow-up to occur.<br /><br />“The ultimate hope with the experiment was definitely to see pollution at the firm level drop,” Duflo says. The state’s enforcement was effective, as Pande explains, partly because “it becomes cheaper for some of the more egregious pollution violators to reduce pollution levels than to attempt to persuade auditors to falsify reports.”<br /><br />According to Ryan, the Gujarat case also dispels myths about the difficulty of enforcing laws, since the experiment “shows the government has credibility and will.” <br /><br /><strong>But how general is the finding?</strong><br /><br />In the paper, the authors broaden their critique of the audit system, referring to standard corporate financial reports and the global debt-rating system as other areas where auditors have skewed auditing incentives. Still, it is an open question how broadly the current study’s findings can be generalized. <br /><br />“It would be a mistake to assume that quarterly financial reports for public companies in the U.S. are exactly the same as pollution reports in Gujarat, India,” Greenstone acknowledges. “But one thing I do know is that these markets were all set up with an obvious fundamental flaw — they all have the feature that the auditors are paid by the firms who have a stake in the outcome of the audit.”<br /><br />Some scholars of finance say the study deserves wide dissemination. <br /><br />“This is a wonderful paper,” says Andrew Metrick, a professor and deputy dean at the Yale School of Management. “It is a very strong piece of evidence that, in the context they studied, random assignment produces unbiased results. And I think it’s broadly applicable.” <br /><br />Indeed, Metrick says he may make the paper required reading in a new program Yale established this year that provides research and training for financial regulators from around the world.<br /><br />To be sure, many large corporations have complicated operations that cannot be audited in the manner of emissions; in those cases, a counterargument goes, retaining the same auditor who knows the firm well may be a better practice. But Metrick suggests that in such cases, auditors could be randomly assigned to firms for, say, five-year periods. At a minimum, he notes, the Dodd-Frank law on financial regulation mandates further study of these issues.<br /><br />Greenstone also says he hopes the current finding will spur related experiments, and gain notice among regulators and policymakers. <br /><br />“No one has really had the political will to do something about this,” Greenstone says. “Now we have some evidence.” <br /><br />The study was funded by the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, the International Growth Centre, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, the National Science Foundation and the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard.Economics, Humanities, India, Industry, Social sciences, PollutionIn search of transparencyhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/daniel-ellsberg-morison-prize-lecture-1008
Former military analyst and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg speaks on the need for open public discussion of vital issues.Tue, 08 Oct 2013 17:00:50 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/daniel-ellsberg-morison-prize-lecture-1008Scientists and government officials have a pressing responsibility to create transparent public debates about our use of technology, the noted former military analyst and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said in a public lecture at MIT on Monday afternoon. <br /><br />Citing Francis Bacon’s dictum that “science should exclusively benefit humanity,” Ellsberg noted that the presence of nuclear weapons and the ongoing threat posed by climate change now mean that we must also confront the potentially harmful consequences of progress. And yet, he asserted, a culture of secrecy prevents a fully informed public from weighing in on vital matters such as nuclear proliferation.<br /><br />“This secrecy threatens our extinction, or, I would say, near-extinction,” Ellsberg declared.<br /><br />Ellsberg’s talk, on “The Future of Secrecy, Democracy, and Humanity,” was the annual Morison Prize Lecture sponsored by MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). He gave his remarks before a crowd of about 200 people in Wong Auditorium. <br /><br />Speaking at great length about nuclear arms, Ellsberg sharply criticized war planning that involves exchanges of hundreds of missiles — which, he said, often assumes hundreds of millions of civilian deaths, at a minimum. Ellsberg said that scientists who understand the planet-altering effects of such scenarios should continue to voice their concerns about the issue, and expressed disappointment that no government officials with access to such military plans had brought the scenarios directly into the public eye. <br /><br />“Let’s see the actual plans and see what the [public] impact would be,” Ellsberg said. <br /><br />Public disapproval of such scenarios, Ellsberg added, could help reduce arms stockpiles and make all nuclear scenarios, including responses to false alarms, less likely.<br /><br />“If democracy doesn’t have a future, then humanity doesn’t have a future,” Ellsberg said.<br /><br />Ellsberg was a visiting research fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies when, in 1971, he leaked to <i>The New York Times </i>classified material about the Vietnam War now known as the “Pentagon Papers.” The documents helped reveal the government’s own understanding of the difficulties inherent in winning the war. Ellsberg was arrested for leaking the information, but the case against him was dismissed in 1973.<br /><br />However, Ellsberg included himself as one of those who has not pushed hard enough for transparency in civic life. He told the audience that his greatest regret in life was not making public, during the 1964 presidential campaign, information about President Lyndon Johnson’s aims in Vietnam. Ellsberg was then an analyst in the Department of Defense. <br /><br />“I knew the president was planning a wider war,” Ellsberg claimed on Monday. Had he released those documents, he said, “ I do not believe there would have been a Vietnam War.” <br /><br /><strong>What a difference 40 years makes</strong><br /><br />Ellsberg’s public profile has risen recently in connection with highly publicized incidents involving former Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who released a trove of documents on the Iraq War, and former government contractor Edward Snowden, who released documents about the National Security Agency’s ability to monitor electronic communications.<br /><br />When he leaked the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg said, “I expected to go to prison for the rest of my life.” In Manning and Snowden, Ellsberg added, he recognized the same kind of expectation. However, Ellsberg added, he had advantages that today’s informants lack, including a greater federal tolerance for informants — Ellsberg was released from prison while awaiting trial — and less governmental capacity to monitor communications. <br /><br />He sounded a wary note about the latter issue. While “we don’t live in a police state,” Ellsberg said, people should be concerned about living in a society in which all the communications of citizens, including lawmakers, can potentially be reconstructed.<br /><br />“Can there be independent branches [of government] when one branch knows every detail of everybody … in the other branches?” Ellsberg asked. Abstract though such concerns might sound, he added, the public should be invested in preserving its liberties to the fullest extent possible. <br /><br />“If there is a chance of changing this situation, it can be done by pressure from the public on Congress,” he added. <br /><br />The annual lecture is named after Elting Morison, an MIT faculty member for 35 years and a founder of the STS program, who wrote extensively about technology and military history. It is funded by a gift from Morison’s family along with the Hitchiner Manufacturing Company.Daniel EllsbergHumanities, Special events and guest speakers, Technology and society, Foreign policy, Policy, PoliticsKarina Arnaez named diversity manager for MIT SHASShttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/karina-arnaez-named-diversity-manager-for-mit-shass
Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:15:00 -0400School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Scienceshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/karina-arnaez-named-diversity-manager-for-mit-shass<i>Dean Deborah Fitzgerald has announced that Karina Arnaez has joined the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences in the newly created role of diversity manager. Arnaez, MIT's first school-level, full-time diversity manager, previously served as senior diversity manager at EMC<sup>2</sup>, and has worked in diversity and recruitment at Simmons College, Boston College and Cardinal Health.<br /><br />Twice named one of Massachusetts’ 100 most influential people for Latinos by </i>El Planeta<i> newspaper, the largest circulation Spanish-language publication in the state, Arnaez is a past president and Advisory Council executive of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, Boston Chapter. She holds a B.A. in International Business and Finance, and an M.B.A., both from Northeastern University.<br /><br />Recently, Arnaez sat down with SHASS Senior Writer Kathryn O’Neill to talk about the School’s diversity vision.</i><br /><br /><strong>How did you get interested in this field and what did you do before coming to MIT?</strong><br /><br />A catalyst to my interest in the field of diversity and inclusion was actively engaging as founder and president of the Hispanic/Latino employee resource group at my company. I remember how much I was looking forward to our first meeting, because I only knew one person there with a Hispanic/Latino background, and I hoped to meet more. I was amazed to see the group grow to 100 people over the next year. Our programs fostered new connections among individuals and had a transformative effect on both employees and the organization. I saw members become re-energized about their jobs as a sense of inclusion empowered them to be their best selves.<br /><br />At that time, I was already working as a program manager in human resources implementing “Six Sigma,” a process-improvement strategy. In that role, I discovered that the biggest and most satisfying moments are when you see a positive change beginning for people — you see that breakthrough improvement. This is also true in the area of diversity, where we have the ability to help transform groups and communities. <br /><br />So, when a diversity manager job opportunity arose at the company, I knew immediately that I wanted to continue this work. I am passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion because I have seen how it can make an impact throughout an organization in the areas of recruitment, retention and development.<br /><br /><strong>What are the School’s goals for this new position, and how do they fit in with the Institute’s overall diversity goals?</strong><br /><br />One of our goals is to increase the number of minorities and women among the faculty, both on the recruiting side and in terms of retention. That will be a primary focus. <br /><br />In 2004, the MIT faculty resolved to double — within ten years — the percentage of underrepresented minority faculty, and triple the percentage of underrepresented minority graduate students. We have made progress, and MIT is working hard to keep moving forward, recognizing that’s it’s not always enough to rely on the Institute’s strong identity and reputation. <br /><br />At SHASS we intend to further strengthen our outreach to professional organizations focused on diversity, create more diversity faculty development programs and continue to foster an environment of inclusive excellence. MIT has a deep commitment to diversity, and I see these goals as something we can achieve.<br /><br />The United States is changing significantly. Baby Boomers are retiring, and the U.S. Census projects that by 2043 we will be a majority-minority nation. Some states are already majority-minority. As MIT says in its literature: “We need to prepare our students to step outside their own worldviews, to appreciate other people's life experiences and to engage their perspectives.” <br /><br />Our diversity and inclusion faculty goals at SHASS contribute to the overall MIT goals, which focus on MIT faculty, students, post-docs, and staff. Fortunately for me, countless individuals at the Institute have paved the way and laid the groundwork — notably through the "<a href="/newsoffice/2010/diversity-report-0114.html" target="_self">Report on the Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity</a>" — for what we need to do to move forward. President Reif put it best when he said he “wants to help the entire MIT community draw strength and energy from our extraordinary diversity of experiences and backgrounds.”<br /><br />Ultimately, increasing diversity is a community effort. So we are working together at SHASS to advance our mission. <br /><br /><strong>What challenges do you think the School faces in improving diversity and inclusion?</strong><br /><br />If you take a step back and look at the population as a whole, very few people get PhDs. In fact, only 3.2 million people age 25 and older have doctoral degrees in the United States, out of a population of 204.6 million. Within the population of women and underrepresented minorities, that number is even smaller. Therefore, the challenge is, how do we position MIT and SHASS among the organizations that are working to increase diversity? One of the things I’ll focus on is raising the visibility of MIT’s commitment to diversity, increasing outreach efforts, and creating programs that will help us reach our goals. We can do more to let people know about the great range of people who make up the MIT community, including the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. <br /><br />The MIT leadership is deeply aware that continuing to attract and draw on the genius of many diverse populations is critical to maintaining the Institute’s excellence in a global world. At MIT, we always want to find exceptionally qualified candidates, and the real question is: How do we go to all the right places to find the most talented and promising people?<br /><br />
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<p class="shass">Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications<br />Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand<br />Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill</p>Karina ArnaezAdministration, Arts, Diversity, Humanities, Social sciences, StaffBroadcasting rightshttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/faculty-profile-heather-hendershot-0925
MIT professor Heather Hendershot studies the conservative movement’s strategic use of television through the decades.Wed, 25 Sep 2013 04:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/faculty-profile-heather-hendershot-0925<p>Even as it grew in popularity in the postwar years, relatively few scholars studied television: Full of dismal middlebrow fare, from lightweight sitcoms to hokey soap operas, it was seen as far less worthy of critical appraisal than film.<br />
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Even so, the immense popularity and apparent power of television made it ripe for analysis blending an examination of shows themselves with the political and economic components of the medium. Enter Heather Hendershot, who since the 1990s has been a prolific author of books and papers about television and politics — work that has helped to decipher our cultural past, and its politics.<br />
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<div><img src="/newsoffice/sites/mit.edu.newsoffice/files/images/hendershot-560.jpg" /><br />
Heather Hendershot Photo: Bryce Vickmark</div>
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Hendershot’s three books, many papers, and an edited volume have covered topics from censorship of children’s programming to, more recently, in-depth studies of conservative political broadcasts. In unmatched detail, she has traced right-wing media from some of its overtly partisan founders in the 1950s and 1960s to the more refined, professional content developed by groups such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization in the 1990s.<br />
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The more polished programming “was part of the modernizing agenda of conservative culture,” says Hendershot, now a professor of film and media studies and the director of graduate studies in MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing. Such shows, in effect, broadcast the message that conservatives “were not backward and always trying to censor [programming].”<br />
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A key part of this transformation is the subject of Hendershot’s current book in progress: William F. Buckley and his popular public-television talk show, “The Firing Line,” which sought a higher intellectual ground and featured an eclectic range of guests.<br />
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“He was interested in debating and allowing ideas to compete with one another,” Hendershot says.<br />
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And yet, she notes, a lot of conservative television today has reverted to “fire and brimstone. And it’s effective. Just like a lot of people today would rather see a ‘Transformers’ film than a Japanese art film from the 1950s, they would rather listen to an invigorating radio show that gets you excited and angry.”<br />
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<strong>Home Alabama</strong><br />
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Hendershot grew up in Birmingham, Ala., one of the most conservative regions of the country — but in a Quaker family, which set her apart from the culture around her. Quakers weren’t exactly thick on the ground in her hometown: “It was really a minority thing in Birmingham,” she says in an amused tone. “But there were enough for a meeting, which still exists, and now they have a meeting house.”<br />
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Hendershot says her surroundings shaped her, primarily in gender terms. “It formed me more as a feminist than as someone interested in conservative culture per se,” she says. “There were all these rules you had to learn [as a woman], a certain way to be proper, and I think that was more important for my political formation.”<br />
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Hendershot headed off to Yale University for her undergraduate degree, taking a double major in French and film studies. She then obtained her graduate degrees in film studies at the University of Rochester, which was near the major film archive at George Eastman House, and whose English department was home to some leading feminist film scholars.<br />
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While at Rochester, Hendershot says, her interests gravitated toward the politics of television, partly in response to things like Focus on the Family’s protests against the content of shows such as “NYPD Blue.”<br />
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“There I was, in a film program that was housed in an English department, studying television,” she notes wryly.<br />
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Her first book, based on her doctoral thesis, was “Saturday Morning Censors,” (Duke University Press, 1998), about censorship and children’s television. Her next book, “Shaking the World for Jesus,” (University of Chicago Press, 2004) analyzed media productions ranging from creationist educational films to Christian music videos.<br />
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In 2004, Hendershot also edited an anthology of essays, “Nickelodeon Nation” (New York University Press). Her most recent book, “What’s Fair on the Air?” (University of Chicago Press, 2011), examined a quartet of right-wing pioneers — H.L. Hunt, Dan Smoot, Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis — who helped convince conservatives to take to the airwaves.<br />
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“These broadcasters were very controversial at the time,” Hendershot says. “And yet they’ve completely been forgotten by history.”<br />
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<strong>Firing away</strong><br />
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At MIT, Hendershot is active in developing new undergraduate and graduate courses, which — for all her interest in television — compel students to study culture and politics across a variety of media. In some cases, that means getting students to dig into silent films, part of an undergraduate course she offered last fall — complete with special screenings for the class, the better for immersive viewing.<br />
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“I want you to give [those films] your undivided attention,” Hendershot says. “If we’re watching a Gloria Swanson movie from 1926, I guarantee you no one watched it at home on their lap or in their hand. They were in a movie theater in the dark with other people, and that’s how that text was created to be experienced. I think you can be flexible in the course of doing research, but you need to experience [films] on the big screen — and not email or text while watching. That’s really important.”<br />
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For the “Firing Line” project, Hendershot is viewing as many episodes as possible — there were about 1,500 in all, as the show ran from 1966 until 1999 — and digging into corresponding archival evidence.<br />
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Hendershot says Buckley had not so much “a disagreement with [his predecessors’] politics, but their style. They seemed backward, they were loud, and they were conspiratorial.” Moreover, she notes, Buckley welcomed a wide range of guests, from Black Panthers and feminist leaders to conservatives.<br />
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On balance, Hendershot says, the show was an enormously effective “gateway to conservatism” for viewers, although sometimes Buckley’s opponents scored more points: Muhammad Ali (on Vietnam) and Germaine Greer (on feminism) were among political opponents who were generally perceived to have gotten the better of Buckley in debate.<br />
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“He wasn’t changing his mind, but he was interested in the act of engagement with the other side,” Hendershot says. Sounds like a story that will be worth turning off the television to read.</p>
Heather HendershotComparative Media Studies/Writing, Faculty, Films, Humanities, Media, Profile, Writing, TVRace and classhttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/ebony-and-ivy-0924
MIT historian Craig Wilder documents the manifold links between universities and the slave economy in colonial America.Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes, MIT News Officehttp://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/ebony-and-ivy-0924<p>In 2006, Brown University made headlines by releasing a report documenting the institution’s historical links to slavery. As the university confirmed, it had accepted donations from slave owners and slave traders, dating to its founding in 1764.<br />
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That report turned heads both because of its thoroughness and because of Brown’s geographic location, in New England. Many Southern universities had obviously been enmeshed with slavery, even owning slaves. But as Brown’s report suggested, colleges and universities up and down the East Coast had deep connections to slavery prior to 1865.<br />
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“Even institutions we see as fairly benign are enveloped in this system, this Atlantic economy,” says Craig Wilder, a professor of history and head of the history faculty at MIT. “That economy was heavily rooted in the slave trade.”<br />
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Now Wilder has a written a new book exploring the breadth of the economic, social and intellectual entanglements between America’s early universities and the slave trade. In “Ebony &amp; Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” published this month by Bloomsbury Press, Wilder details how a number of American colleges, from the 1600s through the 1800s, were founded and governed by slaveholders and slave traders, while receiving funding and recruiting students from wealthy colonial families whose businesses were built on slavery.<br />
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As Wilder shows, the relationship between colleges and the slave economy went both ways: America’s early colleges not only received backing from slave owners and slave traders, but in turn produced graduates who governed the slave economy, and, in another part of the colonial effort, oversaw efforts to convert Native Americans to Christianity.<br />
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“Colleges supplied the administrations of the colonies, supported domestic institutions, and advanced Christian rule over Native people,” Wilder writes.<br />
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For all of that, Wilder says, his book is not a broadside against America’s higher-education system. Instead, it is a historical reconstruction of the ways that colleges and universities were a product of the society from which they emerged, while enabling its growth.<br />
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“If readers imagine it’s a book that just attacks colleges, they’ll be disappointed,” Wilder says. “Hopefully they will be surprised that it’s much more about the role of the college in the North American colonies and in the rise of the United States.”<br />
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<strong>The children of colonialism, and their families</strong><br />
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For insight into the tolerance of slavery among early college benefactors, consider one example from Wilder’s book: Jonathan Belcher, the son of a merchant who actively participated in the slave trade. In 1708, the younger Belcher traveled to Europe and gave a Native American slave to a Hanoverian princess. He was appointed governor of Massachusetts in 1729 by King George II of England, and became a trustee of Harvard College, his alma mater; then, in the 1740s, Belcher was appointed governor of New Jersey, where he raised funds for (and made donations to) the brand-new College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.<br />
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“Jonathan Belcher was a child of colonialism,” Wilder argues in the book. Indeed, one sobering implication of Wilder’s work is that early American colleges almost inevitably needed the support of people like Belcher, who had profited from the slave trade, simply to survive.&nbsp;<br />
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New England, after all, prospered partly because of a shipping economy that linked it to the American South, the Caribbean, and the transatlantic slave trade. New Englanders shipped materials south while bringing goods produced with slave labor back, and participated in the slave trade as investors and insurers. Colleges only enhanced those ties.<br />
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“It’s the wealthy sons of Virginia and the sons of the Caribbean plantations who are coveted by the colonial schools,” Wilder says. “If you’re going to maintain your enrollments and create warm relations with potential donors, then you’re following New England’s ships south to Virginia, the Carolinas and the West Indies. In much the same way that New England maintained itself by carrying on a healthy merchant trade with [those places], the colleges also used those trade networks.”<br />
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As Wilder also explores in the book, the setting of these colleges, in the New World, actually contributed to the rise of racial theories about humans: In the 18th century, scores of people educated at American colleges were continuing their studies in the great universities of Europe, where they shared accounts of their firsthand contact with black people and Native Americans.<br />
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“These colonial students were given tremendous authority,” Wilder adds.<br />
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Support for slavery was hardly unanimous in the United States, however. By the late 1700s, many professors and even the presidents of what are now Brown, Columbia and Yale universities, among other schools, had made a cause of antislavery, and in some cases had personally freed slaves. This debate even spread to the South: In the 1820s and 1830s, student societies at the University of Georgia resolved that slavery was unjust, while the University of North Carolina published an antislavery critique by a university trustee.<br />
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“Colleges turned to and exploited the slave economies of the Americas at the same time they were hosting debates about whether slavery was right or wrong,” Wilder notes. “So these tensions lived constantly within the academy.”<br />
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<strong>Not running from history</strong><br />
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Wilder began his research on the book in 2002, but says he had come to an impasse in his work by 2006, and was considering just writing a couple of journal articles on the topic when Brown published its report, under the direction of then-president Ruth Simmons.<br />
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“It’s easy to forget how much courage it took for Brown to investigate these rumors and publish the findings,” Wilder observes. “And within our institutions, we have tended to run away from this history.”<br />
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Wilder persisted, and produced a work that has garnered praise from other scholars. Martha Sandweiss, a historian at Princeton, calls it “an eye-opening book” resulting from “deep and imaginative research.”<br />
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But to the extent that “Ebony &amp; Ivy” casts a harsh light upon the deep history of American education, Wilder says, it does so with the intention of making us think, matter-of-factly, about race in the larger trajectory of American history.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
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“The reality is, there is nothing in the archives that’s going to destroy any of these schools,” Wilder says. “I have worked for and gone to some of these schools, and I have nothing but affection for them. The goal is not to expose their hypocrisies. It is to recognize how significant these institutions are, in understanding the complexities of slavery and the slave trade in the early history of North America and the United States.”</p>
Craig WilderSlavery, Humanities, Social sciences, History